Suffering for Dummies

One of the biggest problems first worlders face is our comfort. Hot showers, three squares, storage units — you know the script. We are very comfortable. For us, suffering is a kind of pathos, rarely a tragedy, almost comic in its triviality. Comics are having a problem these days, telling jokes, because the image of people dying alone, breathless, while potentially infecting others is not funny.

While way too many of us have died this terrible death, or had to work maskless near it, most of us have not. We remain adjacent. We remain on the edge of realization of these matters and wonder why we would bother going there. Our mantras grow: “I can’t complain.” “A lot of people have it a lot worse than I do.” Etc.

Because we have so little experience with suffering — oppression, starvation, refugee-ing — we are massively ill -prepared for a pandemic. If we weren’t raised with suffering, it is hard to get to know it as an adult.

According to a recent New York Times article, what people miss the most are the former guarantors of a good time. Missing is a kind of suffering, its name, however, is loss, not suffering. The loss of loves hurts, even if you are a first worlder. In this order, the article named

A live audience, the scent of Chinatown, being in a classroom, newspapers from Street kiosks. (It made me happy that Curtis Sliwa was interviewed to get this lament about the newspaper and the kiosk. Curtis is the founder of the guardian angels and now a talk radio host.).