What do we do with Pain?
I gave my sixth speech today at the Toastmasters meeting! Yay! I decided to post my speech. The emphasis was on vocal variety. I was to use a voice that is pleasing to listen to, with proper balance of volume, pitch and rate, and use pauses that enhanced my message. I do not think I succeeded in achieving all the goals of this speech, but I gave it my best shot! Thanks to www.teainapril.blogspot.com for the inspiration for the speech!
We the selfish ones have created for ourselves a bubble in which we are impervious to real pain and tragedy- Copied from http://teainapril.blogspot.com/2010/07/we-selfish-ones.html!
I stumbled on the above quotation on a blog while struggling to decide what to speak about today. And I chose the topic of Pain. Pain has both physical and emotional components and can be experienced individually and shared collectively. It is an emotion which cannot be hid, real pain cannot be missed. But ever so often we are impervious to the pain of others and selfishly pass by them without an empathetic response or an offer to help.
Are we guilty of a half hearted response or no response at all? As a child I found a newspaper printed in 1960 and in many ways it was very different from the papers of that day, the pages were yellow, the printing style was funny but something else caught my attention –It was the headline for that day. It read ‘ Bus runs into a building and kills 2 people’. That piece of information made the headlines in 1960! 50 years later that piece of news will most likely be a small 2 by 2 column hidden in a small column amongst other headlines. The headlines today would most probably speak of a celebrities triumph or some political intrigue.
In broader terms how much has the suffering of entire generations been eclipsed by more sensational news because it is not catchy enough or is not something people want to think about or even acknowledge! How much pain do we ignore because the media would rather feed us the dregs of entertainment than the full cup of a peoples suffering. Even headlines that should evoke our emotions- 48 killed in the rising waters of the flood in Pakistan, 4 dead in violence at the Isreali Lebanon border, 60 killed by bomb blasts in Pakistan elicit maybe a shrug and a lift of our eyebrows amd then ten minutes later we promptly forget what the news is. It doesnt affect us because we are miles away from it and thankfully so is anyone we know.
Leprosy is a disease that demonstrates the effects that ignoring pain can have. The disfigurement of the hands and the limbs in Leprosy is caused by nerves in the limbs not functioning as they should because they have been destroyed by Mycobacterium leprae. Signals sent from the pain receptors in the limbs are not transmitted to the brain giving rise to a patient who does not feel any pain. A person with leprosy can hold hot pots and pans without feeling any sensation resulting in burns to the hands. Feet are banged against hard objectst, fingers and toes can be hammered, hit, cut and even amputated without the patients realizing it and gradually a full limb is turned into a gnarled appendage. Pain has a purpose. Its a sensation that raises a red flag and it helps us realize that there is something wrong with our bodies and either seek help or avoid danger.
In the same way if we do not feel the pain of those who hurt around us we deceive ourselves and are not any different from the gnarled hand of a leprous patient. In history, conflict, wars and social uprising have proved to be the tipping point of a pain which has reached its limits and in most cases have been ignored. The holocaust during world war II ,ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, australias stolen generation, the Biafran war in Nigeria, Argentinas dirty war are all such examples.
How do we acknowledge and help to ease the pain of those around us? How do we emerge from the bubble in which we have hidden ourselves? For starters we can help protect the rights of others as earnestly as we seek our own rights. We can be a voice to those who have been robbed of speech and bearers of light to those who live in darkness. We can fight with our pens the oppression that abounds in spheres beyond our shores. Even if our protests yield nothing we must not stand idly by. It is on record that before the extermination of Jews and other minor ethnic groups in europe legislation had been enacted years before to ‘remove’ them from civil society, how many people responded to the pain this caused? I wager, no one or perhaps very few people did.
How many times do we respond to the pain around us? I hate to think that a day will come when I cry for help and no one responds. So I have decided today to be more than a passive witness to the pain others feel, I hope and pray that I can be much more than the panacea to their suffering!
We the selfish ones have created for ourselves a bubble in which we are impervious to real pain and tragedy- Copied from http://teainapril.blogspot.com/2010/07/we-selfish-ones.html!
I stumbled on the above quotation on a blog while struggling to decide what to speak about today. And I chose the topic of Pain. Pain has both physical and emotional components and can be experienced individually and shared collectively. It is an emotion which cannot be hid, real pain cannot be missed. But ever so often we are impervious to the pain of others and selfishly pass by them without an empathetic response or an offer to help.
Are we guilty of a half hearted response or no response at all? As a child I found a newspaper printed in 1960 and in many ways it was very different from the papers of that day, the pages were yellow, the printing style was funny but something else caught my attention –It was the headline for that day. It read ‘ Bus runs into a building and kills 2 people’. That piece of information made the headlines in 1960! 50 years later that piece of news will most likely be a small 2 by 2 column hidden in a small column amongst other headlines. The headlines today would most probably speak of a celebrities triumph or some political intrigue.
In broader terms how much has the suffering of entire generations been eclipsed by more sensational news because it is not catchy enough or is not something people want to think about or even acknowledge! How much pain do we ignore because the media would rather feed us the dregs of entertainment than the full cup of a peoples suffering. Even headlines that should evoke our emotions- 48 killed in the rising waters of the flood in Pakistan, 4 dead in violence at the Isreali Lebanon border, 60 killed by bomb blasts in Pakistan elicit maybe a shrug and a lift of our eyebrows amd then ten minutes later we promptly forget what the news is. It doesnt affect us because we are miles away from it and thankfully so is anyone we know.
Leprosy is a disease that demonstrates the effects that ignoring pain can have. The disfigurement of the hands and the limbs in Leprosy is caused by nerves in the limbs not functioning as they should because they have been destroyed by Mycobacterium leprae. Signals sent from the pain receptors in the limbs are not transmitted to the brain giving rise to a patient who does not feel any pain. A person with leprosy can hold hot pots and pans without feeling any sensation resulting in burns to the hands. Feet are banged against hard objectst, fingers and toes can be hammered, hit, cut and even amputated without the patients realizing it and gradually a full limb is turned into a gnarled appendage. Pain has a purpose. Its a sensation that raises a red flag and it helps us realize that there is something wrong with our bodies and either seek help or avoid danger.
In the same way if we do not feel the pain of those who hurt around us we deceive ourselves and are not any different from the gnarled hand of a leprous patient. In history, conflict, wars and social uprising have proved to be the tipping point of a pain which has reached its limits and in most cases have been ignored. The holocaust during world war II ,ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, australias stolen generation, the Biafran war in Nigeria, Argentinas dirty war are all such examples.
How do we acknowledge and help to ease the pain of those around us? How do we emerge from the bubble in which we have hidden ourselves? For starters we can help protect the rights of others as earnestly as we seek our own rights. We can be a voice to those who have been robbed of speech and bearers of light to those who live in darkness. We can fight with our pens the oppression that abounds in spheres beyond our shores. Even if our protests yield nothing we must not stand idly by. It is on record that before the extermination of Jews and other minor ethnic groups in europe legislation had been enacted years before to ‘remove’ them from civil society, how many people responded to the pain this caused? I wager, no one or perhaps very few people did.
How many times do we respond to the pain around us? I hate to think that a day will come when I cry for help and no one responds. So I have decided today to be more than a passive witness to the pain others feel, I hope and pray that I can be much more than the panacea to their suffering!
Hey, just saw your comment on my blog, no problem at all, nice write up :)
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