A cry for help can look like anything
What is expressed is not always what is meant
When you are a witness to another human's full-bodied, full-throated, unrestrained grieving, it stays with you. So when I think about what it might take to heal our global traumas, I wonder if we will be able to give people time and space to make those sounds—and if we will be willing to listen.
–Jane McGonigal
There's this story about an old man1, Joseph, who is experiencing dizzy spells, but none of his anti-nausea medications are doing a thing. Eventually, a new doctor asks Joseph to describe his symptoms more closely:
"Doctor, I feel dizzy nearly all the time since my wife died. I don't know what to do with myself. I'm confused. I watch TV, but I'm not interested. I go outside, but there's no place to go."
He looked sad indeed as he told of the emptiness of his life. He had moved to California with his wife after retirement. He had no children, no close friends, no special interests. Suddenly the real problem became clearer to Dr. Barbour. "Dizzy" was Joseph's way of expressing his confusion. He was a lonely man, overcome with grief, who hadn't yet learned to develop a new life.
Should you choose to practice compassion, you must learn that a cry for help can look like anything. What is expressed is not always what is meant. What is meant is sometimes not expressed at all.
It would be nice if humans in pain could express what they need in impeccable language. But self-awareness and clearly naming your internal states is already challenging for a mildly dehydrated human; it is near impossible when you are suffering.
And yes, it would be nice if the sounds people make when suffering could be pleasing to the ear. Instead, suffering can appear as anger, resentment, or even hatred. If you are surprised by this, perhaps you have been blessed to only witness human pain from the bleachers.
Up close, you can see how the bleach of cruel happenstance renders humans into something less so. Suffering robs us of our capacity for clear communication, let alone fair communication. As Freddie DeBoer aptly notes, "there is no such thing as autonomy or freedom or personal choice under the grips of a mental illness that hijacks the mind."2 Those who are suffering are not free.
Because this is the Internet, I am obligated to mollify this tendentious view (that human suffering is not aesthetic) with a mainstream prayer: "I don't mean to excuse toxic individuals or justify harmful behaviors." But I don’t mean it.
But what if the problem isn't other people, but the pain that torments them? What if humans say and do things they don't mean, only because they are suffering? What if our current national divisions are the result of interpreting expressions of human suffering as something else? What if the rifts in your closest relationships are because of the same thing?
Should you choose to practice compassion, you must tune your senses to behold a wider range human expression and witness it without judgement. Be the one not talking, and become one who is translating. Like love, grief must be translated to be fully understood.
From Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work, Chip Heath, Dan Heath