Suffering and Sympathy: Learning from Others.

this video after this claim has no
agenda it's not making an excuse for something else it's not pursuing some other objective this video is simply a reflection on something I think is meaningful to my own life and it may or may not be meaningful to your life whoever you are watching it um I just got a very hostile series of responses within patreon from a commenter who is about 60 years of age and this commenter asked me a question fair enough although it was brief and somewhat truculent asking if I had it in me to change if the type of tactics I've been talking about why I make youtube videos the way I do why this whole project means what it means to my life if I can change and I think implicitly she's asking a war if I'm stuck in my ways now in reply I said look I'm someone who's had to and you're really terrible really dramatic changes such as stopping everything I was doing in Cambodia moving to Saskatchewan and studying Cree and said I've never known anyone who made changes that dramatic of that kind you know switching from cambodian as a language decree switching from the politics of Southeast Asia politics and history and religion in Southeast Asia to First Nations people in Canada so my point was in answering yes not only am i capable of making changes of the type she asked about which are relatively trivial like why do you make youtube videos the way that you do but ya sham someone who's undergone these sorts of dramatic and sudden changes so this member of my patreon forum respond to this in a way that was both defensive and offensive respond in a way that that I called in the past just in my personal life you know the misery Olympics now again it turns out this bro unknown to me this person about 60 years of age and she writes back in effect saying oh well you think you've gone through changes in your life this is nothing here are the changes I've gone through and making a great boast of her own sorrow and our own suffering um I think this is a habit of mind we all have to learn to overcome I don't I think it's quite natural when someone tells you that their parents beat them up as a kid to come back by saying oh well my parents beat me up even worse or to come by saying I know somebody else whose parents beat them up much worse than that to try to respond to sorrow and suffering someone sharing with you their sorrows by trying to eclipse that sir but right up oh do that sorrow but it's really wrong I mean that both kind of ethically and tactically it is really the wrong way to reply now in this case I was actually answering this woman's question plain and simple I was not making a great show of my sorrows in life but it is true there was tremendous suffering for me in ending one career and beginning another that way and that's something I've had to do repeatedly it was also true when I said I don't know anyone who's made that sort of change I could say more but there's no point here you know but that's all that means is I I don't know the people I've known in my life I've never known someone who made that kind of change changing from Cambodian decree is an extraordinary and remarkable change so if you want to come back to me by saying that it's not extraordinary remarkable at all because of what you've done your life for one thing you're missing the opportunity to just tell me who you are and what you've done in your life it's sort of presuming that I wouldn't have a sincere interest in wanting to get to know you and it's also presuming that I wasn't being sincere in answering your question and sharing with you something about Who I am Anna and I answered your question so I it's a peculiar thing this sort of combative tone of who do you think you are don't you know who I think I am i think it's a it's an attitude many of us have from childhood it's certainly something i can remember in the schoolyard i can remember being very common at an early age and the counter opposing attitude of recognizing you know each person could have suffering that's tremendously meaningful to them personally even if that suffering is perhaps trivial on a global scale you know like it may be trivial compared to the sorrows of the average Cambodian peasants who survived the rise and fall of confidence in Cambodia can take one of these dramatic examples from history but that is in the truest sense of the term spurious now I've also been in situations where someone like a co-worker chooses to tell you about great sorrows in the life say a co-worker is going to tell you about a personal trauma personal tragedy or that they were beaten up by their parents as a kid in some terrible way and where you do have to say to them look I'm not the person you should be telling this to it's actually not appropriate for you to share this with me that's a very different situation and that can be awkward and I think there were kind of tactics you learn for dealing with that situation in some way um but it's a very different thing if someone tells you as I told this person I just answer your question can you make a fundamental change he wants to ask me say yes not only can I make fundamental change I have experience with that and I don't know anyone who's been through a similar experience of cutting off your life of bra play in Cambodia starting a new life with Cree with First Nations etc and this woman really wants to reply to me by saying well you ain't [ __ ] the changes the tragedies you've been through are nothing compared to what I've been through that's a lost opportunity because I would be sincerely interested in what this woman has been through if she could present it in any format other than belittling me insulting me and turning this into a a a competition as they say misery Olympics when it needn't be what I said was in no way an offense to her what I said was in no way took away from her life or anything else it answered her question totally something about me and she chooses to make this into a situation where it's a zero-sum game where somehow my experience in life my sorrows and even my answer to a question can't have validity because she's somehow suffered in a way that's more important than how I've suffered I think that's very sad and I think on a profound sense it shows a misunderstanding of what suffering is and why it matters I mean probably the greatest suffering I went through my life was while I was in the hospital with my wife immediately after the birth of my daughter and I could describe all the reasons for that now objectively the hospital we were in was wealthy you know I've actually done research on Hospital conditions in Cambodia etc you know I know what third-world hospitals are like however it's also possible to have a completely wonderful and joyous occasion and a third row la cible including the birth of a child now you know the reasons why the situation the hospital were so miserable actually a lot of them did have to do with veganism has to do with the attitudes of the doctor is the attitude to the nurses the hostility managing a tremendously tense and miserable situation that shouldn't have been but you know the actual bed in the hospital was nice the electrical lights were good okay if you take if you take a step back and photograph the hospital from the exterior there's nothing wrong with it and the country there's a lot right with it you know the standards of Hygiene and the hospital for not bad you can make a list of all the ways in which this is this is a very positive institutional context to give birth to a baby but nevertheless if i sat down with a Cambodian person and explain to them the misery I went through that you know really permanent damage I carry with me for the rest of my life because of how harrowing that experience was that Hospital for me even even then it would be inappropriate for a Cambodian person to turn around and say oh well um you know when my wife gave birth in a hospital the hospital wasn't fancy and beautiful and expensive like your hospital so [ __ ] you it's also your see your misery counts for nothing um and again you know there's a lost opportunity on both sides there you are throwing away the opportunity to learn Who I am what I care about and how my suffering has changed me and you're also making it impossible for me to get to know you because you're presuming i wouldn't have a sincere and sympathetic interest in your background in your experience that i wouldn't welcome you to the table and i wouldn't recognize your suffering as something legitimate and important that i can learn from ok so that's my commentary on the misery olympics as i talk about it i think it is something natural it's a habit of mind that many people not all people have from childhood and part of maturing is breaking that pattern breaking that habit of mind and disciplining yourself to listen to other people suffering with a certain kind of detachment and a certain kind of respect because you know ultimately i mean as with all these things you know a man suffers not in what he feels with what he knows it's not when you scrape your knee that you suffer as a child as a small child it's when you look at your knee you think about it you reflect on it then you feel the pain you can scrape your knee and run around the schoolyard and keep playing for an hour it's really not the event it's what that event means to you and the construction of that meaning ultimately is part of how we construct and construe ourselves who we are someone else could have gone through my experience in Cambodia and learn nothing from it and felt nothing and you know you meet those people there are people who did the same jobs I did more or less in Cambodia and Laos and did it in a shallow light-hearted way and you know didn't suffer terribly one way or another and didn't learn much one way or another that's true i mean we could do a whole video here about english teachers you know people who teach English as a Second Language in Asia some of them are just having a good time couldn't care less or what have you and obviously in a lot of ways even though I did teach English in between other jobs when I was teaching or show the short periods of time I had a lot of things on my mind on my heart that other English teachers might not have so you know how we suffer there's there's just no sense in which that should be or must be you know directly proportional to the problems themselves because with this type of suffering we're getting into the question of what these events mean to us you know what did it mean to me to have to give up my own future as a scholar of Cambodia tera vaada Buddhism the history and politics that region and to start again from a blank piece of paper with the Cree in North America maybe you're not interested maybe you don't want to know but that tells you a lot about me about Who I am and it but why those things matter to me and I can imagine a fictional character who would have laid heartedly you know without great sorrow without great reflection without caring who could have given up the one area of study and taking up another but exactly what I'm trying to communicate you is that's not me I didn't do it casually or in a light-hearted way is it tremendously meaningful to me and as a source of tremendous aura so that capacity and again you know really sympathy the point of sympathy is not to wallow in emotion I really think that the greatest significance of sympathy in our lives is as an analytical tool and I think you ultimately have to invite people to get to know you by sympathizing with you maybe both in your triumphs and your tragedies not only in sorrow