This is from Sara S:
Acclimation to Emotional Pain or Suffering
This, to me, is a strange phenomenon. You know how it's a survival mechanism for humans to never acclimate to physical pain (like, if I put my hand on a hot stove, my hand doesn't stop burning until I remove it, and the function of this phenomenon is to ensure that I will get myself out of harm's way as soon as possible). Why then, does it seem that people so easily acclimate to emotional, mental, or spiritual suffering? Maybe this is just my perception, but let me present you with an example.
I was listening to This American Life several weeks ago on NPR. The story was by a guy about my age and he was talking about rescuing his mother who is an alcoholic. The story starts with him getting a call from the hospital where she's been admitted after someone in her living community (something like a retirement home) found her nearly dead on her couch. She had almost drunk herself to death. The son goes to the apartment after visiting his mother in the hospital and finds that it is filthy, infested with roaches, and in a state of general decay. Over the course of several months, he slowly gets her story of how it is that she has come to such a low point in her life. The thing she says to him that is so interesting to me is that her life started out pretty normal. She was happy, always had some sort of monetary or relationship struggle, but life wasn't too bad. Then, things would happen that would make her situation one notch worse. Her husband was shot because, as she discovered, he was involved in selling drugs illegally. She couldn't get any money so she'd miss her rent payment and get evicted.
He quotes her as saying that "I would just move one more step down on the ladder and, after a certain amount of time, that ladder rung became 'normal' for me. It was the standard against which I measured my life situation. So it was always just a small adjustment whenever something bad would happen again. Eventually, I just lost sight of what a healthy life was and so I didn't try to get back to one because I'd forgotten what it was like."
I just wonder how/why this is possible. Is it possible? To completely lose sight of how to live rightly and how to live in a healthy way that communes with God? Is this a function of free will? God has to give you the opportuntity to sink into sightlessness in order to assure that you can if you want to? Or is this bleak outlook not really true at all: something always happens to remind us that life is better than this. And, if that's true: what reminds us? How do we remember goodness when it's so far away from what we know? Is it because "God's law is written on our hearts?" We have an innate understanding of goodness that's just more nuanced than physical pain and, therefore, more difficult to return to? What do you guys think? I'm wondering because I've had some realizations in my own life lately that seem to come from nowhere: like I realized I've been operation on a set of false pretenses about life and, one day, they just dissappear. One layer at a time my vision becomes clearer. Is it something I'm doing? Or does God just reveal god's self one level at a time in measured steadiness?
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2 comments:
Maybe it is like the history revelation but in reverse. It always seemed strange to me that we have all this revelation and each one is a little better than the next. This is not always the case, but it is the general trend. Maybe we have to slowly come up or down spiritually.
If it is a survival thing though it would make some sense, b/c if you burn your hand you have a harder time surviving, but if you don't adjust to your current situation mentally then you fall into depression and don't survive as well. But, you have to be pretty isolated to not look around and aspire to something better. Maybe "keeping up with the Jones's" is not always bad if it is something more than material possession.
And, it can work negatively in the up direction. I used to get very excited about certanin luxuries that I couldn't often afford. Now that I can afford them they aren't luxuries anymore, but common and not nearly as enjoyable. Something is lost there. Once a queen (I don't remember what queen) was asked what she wanted as a present. She could have anything. She wanted grapes b/c they were rare in her country and it was not even the season for grapes. I CAN GET A GRAPE ANYTIME I WANT! mmmmm.mmmmmmm. I can even freeze them. But, I expect to be able to eat grapes. So, I bet I don't enjoy them nearly as much as that queen did.
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