Pain & Suffering, with a Side Order of NO COMPASSION

by D.G. Connelly


Ever fall off an exercise ball?

I did. As silly as my accident and accompanying injury might sound, I can assure you it really hurt. I can also tell you that, during this past year, it  was the most enlightening fluke that ever happened to me. I laughed, I cried, I learned a lot about myself...and other people.

I learned that other people -- grown-ups who should have known better -- can be unexpectedly nasty and surprisingly cruel when it comes to someone else’s misery.

Like most epiphanies, however, my life lesson began in a very ordinary way.

It happened at the gym.

After completing my usual work-out, I got on an oversized exercise ball to stretch out, just the way I usually did. I was on top of the big ball, bearing down and arching my back against it when ZOOM! The ball suddenly flew out from underneath me at 95 mph and shot across the room. My back -- and my butt -- slammed hard on the floor. The newly polished, gleaming wooden floor, I should add, that also had metal and cement reinforcements underneath.

Like that Life-Alert commercial come to life, I’d fallen and I couldn’t get up...not at first, anyway.

Because I always picked the biggest, highest ball I could find, I’d been stretching about two feet from the ground floor. So when I fell, I fell hard. With a sickening THUD.

Not only was the wind knocked out of me, the muscles in my lower back around the gluteus region were starting to feel numb. I later learned from my chiropractor that these muscles were only doing what they had been designed to do. They were tightening up because they were trying to protect my spine.

I didn’t realize that at the time, of course. To me, it felt as though the lower half of my body was going into shock.

Fortunately, my best friend/work-out partner was with me that day. He managed to help me up so I could hobble out of the deserted exercise studio. Otherwise, who knows how long I would have lain there, waiting for help that never would have arrived.

At the time of my accident, the health club I’d attended for so long was in the midst of a major remodel and renovation. So attendants who used to be around weren’t available. They were too busy recruiting new members to join their updated temple of physical fitness.

They were too busy, too disinterested to assist a long-time member like me. I couldn’t even get anyone to tell me where they’d relocated the first aid station or ice packs. My BFF and I tried on our own to find some kind of relief for my injury, but we couldn’t. What we needed had been reassigned to some secret hiding place.

Is there anything more useless than an iceless ice-pack in hiding that no one wants you to use?

Fortunately, my chiropractor (along with my acupuncturist) provided highly beneficial treatments and advice that encouraged healthy healing.

Unfortunately, it took a looooong time for all those inflamed muscles guarding the base of my spine to fully heal. Much longer than I’d initially expected.

What seemed too trivial to be officially classified as a “fall” turned out to be anything but (no pun intended).

No, it wasn’t that bad of an injury. No broken bones. No fractures. No serious neurological damage. But it was bad enough to make it difficult for me to do anything and everything.

Bad enough so it was impossible for me to move the way I wanted to move.

When muscles are injured and inflamed, they lose a lot of their flexibility and mobility. That’s why my injuries weren’t just an issue of pain tolerance. My pain and suffering led me to this lesson in bodily function: When you’re hurt, your body won’t cooperate. Even when you tough it out and keep going, your muscles still won’t work the way you want them to work.

Keep singing, “I haven’t got time for the pain,” all you want. When your muscles are injured and inflamed, you can’t force them to move the way you want them to move. That’s what happens with muscular injuries. That’s why the recovery time can take so long.

I came to accept the weeks, then months and more months, of recovery as necessary healing time. The pain and suffering I felt were just a part of life. Too bad the other people in my life couldn’t have seen my injury in the spiritual, philosophical way I did. Oh, wait. Now I remember. They couldn’t see it because they were too busy laughing at me.

Apparently, there’s something uproariously hilarious about falling on your butt. Especially when somebody else (and not you) takes the tushie fall. Falling on my head would have been a tragedy. But on my backside? Now that’s funny! Blame it on our hard-wired response to slapstick comedy. Or the way “America’s Funniest Home Videos” has desensitized us. Seeing or hearing about somebody else’s keister-fall seems to crack everybody up (again, no pun intended. When it comes to the rear-end, though, the puns keep on comin’).

As soon as people heard that I had fallen on my butt, they laughed. Virtually everyone, every time. They just couldn’t stop laughing, giggling, or chortling about it. Family, friends, mere acquaintances -- they all laughed. And laughed.

And the more they laughed, the more humiliated I felt. The more they laughed, the more upset I became with myself for allowing such a stupid, careless accident to happen. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I do a simple thing like sit on a ball and not fall off? Duh. Like the unforgiving wooden floor, I became hard on myself. Not on the people who were ridiculing me, but on myself.

And yet, I still had trouble understanding why so many people were laughing at me. They knew how much my injury had hurt and incapacitated me. They knew how much pain and suffering I was enduring. But they kept laughing. Why?

Something was wrong with this picture, something not readily apparent. I knew I had to find out what it was so I could learn from it. That was the whole point of my freak accident: it had been a catalyst for enlightenment.

My big AHA! moment came one afternoon when I was trying to walk outside. I was going around one of those man-made lakes in a nearby office park when I spotted a familiar face.

I saw a fellow health club member I’d known forever. We exchanged greetings. Then I asked how she’d been doing.

She immediately launched into a long story about her latest chronic health problem. I listened patiently. Ten minutes later, after getting all the medical-related details out of her system, she asked about me -- as kind of an afterthought. “So how have you been doing? I haven’t seen you at the gym lately.”

Because of our long history, I couldn’t really blow off her question. Then again, I couldn’t stand to hear any more laughter and ridicule, either. So I compromised by downplaying my condition.

“No big thing, just fell off an exercise ball,” I replied. “Nothing serious. But I was surprised at how much it hurt, you know? How hard it was for me to sit and move --”

Something about my response freaked her out. Instead of laughter, I got an angry outburst. “That?!” she snapped, “That’s nothing!”

Whoa. Nothing? Yeah, it was nothing, all right. It only hurt when I was sitting, standing, walking, or lying down -- and, at that point, I could barely do any of those things.

That’s when I realized what was really going on. My problem wasn’t that everyone was laughing at me or ridiculing my misfortune. The laughter was just a symptom of a much bigger dilemma. The real problem was that there was absolutely no compassion for my pain and suffering.

Compassion, by its very dictionary definition, is a lesson in equal opportunity. It’s a gift that’s supposed to be given freely to all -- not just to an exclusive few. Compassion involves a heartfelt sharing of another’s suffering that should evolve into a tendency to help, to support, to show mercy. Since my accident, I had received very little --if any -- of it.

Aside from the initial help from my work-out partner after I fell, nobody had shown me any sympathy. Only my healthcare providers had shown any actual interest in my condition and recovery. Nobody else extended any sympathetic interest towards my injury. Nobody cared. So I had responded in kind by not giving myself any compassion. Funny,  I’d always believed that “what goes around comes around.” What was coming to me now was a deliberate lack of caring to the Nth degree. I wouldn’t treat a mangy, old dog the way these people were treating me. How did it happen, then, that so many people were being so unkind to me when they knew I was hurting so much?

As I was writing this article and reflecting on my situation, I turned to Buddhism.

For me, Buddhism offers all kinds of practical, do-it-yourself solutions for all people -- not just Buddhists -- who are confounded by life. Ask any master about life’s abstractions or philosophical meanings and you’ll get a personalized plan of meditation. You’ll also get helpful living strategies that can guide you, step-by-step, into greater awareness. Ask for help, and you won’t always get the right answer. But you will always get help in finding the right question.


Most Western religions, on the other hand, are Christian sects that offer inaccessible and impractical help. Too often complex problems are dismissed by priests and ministers alike as “your cross to bear.” Too often those seeking spiritual comfort are told to emulate the Son of God. (Nice work if you don’t mind being crucified.)

In contrast, Buddhism seems to offer a hands-on method for untangling life’s perplexing knots.

Since I’m not a practicing Buddhist, I looked for some insight on Buddhist teachings of compassion. I found it in little book by Sharon Salzberg called The Kindness Handbook: a practical companion. Salzberg, sage teacher and co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, simply and clearly provides information in a way that almost any reader could understand. She also defines compassion in a more viscerally descriptive way than any dictionary could.

“Compassion,” she writes, “ is known in Buddhist teaching as the quivering of the heart in response to pain or suffering.” How profound.

In just 168 pages, Salzberg gives an overview of Buddhist philosophy with explanations, anecdotes, and poetry. Most interesting is her discussion of “lovingkindness.” There is a downside, however, to this altruistic practice of loving mindfulness in action: it’s not easy for anyone to do.

In fact, she makes it clear that even the most dedicated, mindful practitioners of Buddhism experience difficulties in applying their teaching to everyday life. Making the world a better place is really a process that can last a lifetime. And even then, practicing Buddhists won’t necessarily achieve their desired results. It’s hard being good. It’s even harder to do good.

No wonder so many people have no compassion for the pain and suffering of others. They might want to be nice, but they just can’t do it. Being kind and compassionate takes too much work. It’s just too hard for them. So hard that they don’t even bother trying.

They’re incapable of “lovingkindness” because they choose not to think and feel with their hearts.

So, sometimes the only compassionate thing we can do is to be kind to ourselves.

Now, if only I could have gotten those spiritual insights without falling on my ass...