The Megaphone of Pain, Suffering, and Nobility

Human happiness is conditional; suffering is a given. No matter how rich we may be, no matter how intelligent, no matter how kind and good, at some point life is going to grab us by the lapels, give us a shaking, and take us down.

Pain can offer us deep lessons and make us more fully human. Antonio Guillem/Shutterstock

Some will understand more fully than others.

It’s a Wednesday, and you arrive home to find the one you love collapsed on the bedroom floor. The rescue squad brings her to the hospital. Now she lies in neurological intensive care with a brain aneurysm, her skull shaven, kept alive with breathing and feeding tubes, monitored for heartbeat and brain activity. Surrounding her are other patients, many of them unconscious from blood clots in the brain, blows to the head, or some other trauma.