Human existence brings many experiences. People feel joy, hope, gladness, and peace, but also sadness, fear, pain and death. In this we have a real commonality with each other, or at lest we should have. As we go through life, I believe that our common experience should draw us together not only in our joys and triumphs, but also in our shared pain and sorrow. Scripture commands us to "Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep." (Rom 12:15) There is great potential for love and unity in all of this. Who is not moved when seeing people pull together in tragedy or joyfully dance together when a great good is shared?
Unfortunately, there is a tendency in the human heart to relish pain, or to define ourselves by our pain. A sharing of personal tragedy with another person can easily become an exercise in one-upsmanship as each person starts playing the "oh yeah? My situation is worse than yours!" game.
Let's face it - many people like to identify with their pain and wear it as a badge. This is for many reasons. Identifying with my pain gives me bragging rights and makes me a victim who can go around demanding sympathy from others. Also, my pain gives me a free pass for bad behavior. In addition, I am freed from having to listen to your problems because of my own suffering. Being a victim in my pain makes it so that I don't have to work to fix my problems. Finally, my pain can make me part of a small exclusive club whose membership is not open to the general public but only to those who share my particular type of pain.
This last phenomenon is a result of a very pernicious human idea which says "you can't ever understand my pain because it is of a special type that who have not personally experienced". In my opinion, this is a really awful line of thinking because of its damaging effects in not only human relations in general but also in the way we view our world and deal with disappointments and tribulations in our own lives.
Am I saying that the idea totally untrue? No, it obviously has a basis in fact. Some will point out that in a very real sense what I experience is not what you experience, or even if it is, there is no perfect way to prove that it is. Even basic perception is communicated by faith, in a way. How can I know that what I perceive as "red" is not seen by you as what I would call "green"?? This becomes fodder for the deconstructionalist philosopher who takes reality apart and uses that as a club to destroy all meaning in life (or at least the parts they don't like). And yet, in countless ways we can experience our common humanity when enjoying a beautiful orange sunset, smelling a rose (which "by any other name would smell as sweet"), or enjoying a big bowl of ice cream or a hot shower on a cold morning. Whatever we argue intellectually, we certainly enjoy unity in practice, and an assumption of commonality seems to be much more practical than starting from nothing and trying to define reality with no footholds.
The reason I bring this up is not to discuss the nature of reality but to frame this premise: while people generally will agree philosophically that we have common perceptions and feelings, quite down-to-earth people will do the same thing as the philosophers, but with their emotions.
How? By using the argument at the start of this article: "my pain is unique and you will never understand what people like me are going through." I will say why this is bad in part 2.
