I

The Obsolescence of Remedy

There is a cure for almost everything.

Rather, there is a prescription for every condition, no matter how uncommon the condition, or how worthless the prescription. Empathy guarantees it. The market guarantees it. Most of us are familiar with the cure for most things, and the arcane practices of specialized medicine are the exception, not the rule. We all learn how to comfort people, cool them off, warm them up, and encourage them. It’s second nature.

But cures have limits, and there are damages that cannot be overcome. A storm that breaks a drought does nothing for the crops, if the crops have already perished.

Our instincts tell us to feed a starving man. But a man who has been hungry for too long cannot simply be fed. He must be nursed back to health in a measured fashion, and he must be kept from the food that he’s desperate to eat. Our instincts tell us to warm up a cold man. But a man who is too cold cannot simply be warmed; he must be treated in a manner that acknowledges the damage. Frostbitten limbs cannot be massaged, they cannot be helped with hot water, and if the tissues have died, they must be amputated. This is the tragedy: that the natural remedy is rendered useless, and that intuition must be checked when exercising compassion. Yet these physical examples are only shadows of the most poignant instances of this tragedy, as it manifests in emotional trauma.

How does a man comfort a woman who has been raped or abused by a man? What if a man’s comfort is no comfort at all?

How to comfort someone suffering from the darkest despair? Simple encouragements and small acts of kindness seem laced with banality and futility, nothing but sound and fury, fuelling the conviction that they signify nothing.

How to reassure someone who desperately and habitually seeks affirmation? All affirmation seems disingenuous.

What to say to someone shattered by lies? She is jaded—inured to even the most well-established truths, and the purest sincerity.

The tragedy is not the lack of a remedy (for sometimes there is one), but the obsolescence of the common remedy in the face of the deepest trauma.

What injustice is it, that the human response must be muzzled when dealing with those who have been hurt the most? What disaster, that the person can no longer receive the compassion imparted by the basic expressions thereof?

The damage has gone to the heart, and things can never be the same. The common remedy has missed its chance, for some awful thing has entered by the path meant for some good thing, and it has sealed it shut, barring all good things in its wake.

The natural human response is an effective remedy for most things. But in some of the worst cases, it is not. And so many of us are at a loss, confronted with those who are damaged, perhaps beyond repair.

 

II

The Vacuity of Intent

Everyone loves someone. Even if you are the isolated, even the selfish, tend to find someone they will help without the expectation of anything in return. Someone whose problems you will seek solutions to; someone you will try to cheer up when she despairs; someone you will help to achieve whatever brings her happiness, or allays her sadness.

But the world is not made of ghosts and intentions; it is made of matter, strewn inexplicably about. We stumble towards our goals in darkness, skimming the surface of vast and unfathomable clockwork that undergirds the stumbling. To help another person cannot just be willed. Our intentions must make the tortuous journey through matter before they can reach the afflicted.

Yet so many intentions are not equipped for the journey. In most matters we are ignorant, and we constantly seek the help of others, as we grasp for something to guide our actions. We release an intention into the world, believing that we have given it wings to fly. We believe that it will succeed because of experience—the things we have done before, seen before, and heard before. But our judgement is fallible, and our reason fails us.

So it happens that some ailment or dire circumstance befalls a person, perforce enlisting the help of a loved one, and she spares no expense in offering a solution. But suppose the sufferer already knows of this solution, and knows that it is ineffectual. That is the tragedy: that help does not come through the strength of our intentions, but only through cold mechanisms of Nature, which the intentions chance to find. People who care about us may fret and toil for days on end, but the world counts this for nothing.

The kindness is innocent, and the effort is sincere, but the world does not permit the help; it eviscerates the effect, leaving only the intentions. Between two people, good intentions are worth a great deal. But the tragedy is that people do not mean to offer good intentions—they mean to help.

A child saves up her precious coins and deposits them in her father’s lap, having heard of his crippling debts. A man born in the developing world, and his family travels for days to bring him to a shaman. A mother knows that her son is greatly troubled by something that she does not understand, and she buys him a self-help book on the topic of the most worthless sort.

The tragedy is not the lack of a solution (for sometimes there is one), but the mechanical essence of solutions. They cannot be achieved through pure intentions. The world respects only an admixture of knowledge and intent—and in the absence of knowledge we are shut outside the gates, with profiteers and charlatans who prey on our desperation. A skilled outsider, possessed by whimsy, might offer us more healing than a thousand of unskilled loved ones who would lay down their lives for us.

What injustice is it, that cold and lifeless objects must serve as the fragile vessels for our empathy? The slightest error, the slightest knock, and they spill all our hopes and fears out onto ground. They should tremble under the weight of their purpose, perhaps cracking under the strain. But it is just the opposite. We tremble at the smallest movements of matter, and it is we who crack under the strain. A shard of shrapnel is not moved an inch by compassion. No matter how high the waves of our intentions swell, so often they break upon the shores of the world, with no other course but to shrink back and swell again.

 

III

The Cruelty of Necessity

The world is full of things we have made for ourselves. Our streets and shelves are lined with gloves that fit every hand, and shoes that fit every foot, complete with instructions that everyone can understand.

Why have we built all these things? In most cases, we have not done so out of caprice. We have done it to shelter ourselves from the elements, to satisfy our hunger, and to meet needs that the world, at times, has met for us only crudely and halfheartedly.

A wooden chair, alone in a room, tells us a great deal about our condition. It tells us that we are fragile—that we run out of strength and have to rest. It tells us that we must toil before we can rest. It tells us that we need each other—that we trade our capacity to help others, for their capacity to help ours. Every loaf of bread and cup of water testifies to our needs, reminding us of all the things we cannot do without.

And that is the tragedy: that we are indentured by nature at birth, and we are forced to make the best of it. If we do not wish to suffer, we must run, jump, dance, and play such games as we might never have wished to play. No matter what air of dignity we might lend to our eating, our sleeping, or our romantic pursuits, these are inherently humbling acts. We do not choose them. They force themselves upon us.

We are born helpless into the world, and without continuous care we would perish. As we mature, we forget the basic struggles of existence, fancying ourselves autonomous. But this is illusory, for we still cling to every breath and every meal. There is nothing that we can do for ourselves, without the consent of the world.

A woman puts on makeup in the mirror. She turns her head to one side, then the other. She smiles at herself. She must allow her reflection to be held up to the light; she must risk it being crushed, derided and discarded.

A man rehearses what he will say. He says it to himself over and over again. He laughs a mock laugh at his own words, trying to instill confidence in himself. He must submit his desires for scrutiny, ridicule and rejection.

Candidates sit outside the interviewer’s office. They fiddle with their attire and run their hands through their hair. Some are only weeks away from poverty and destitution. They must dress fear and desperation in the guise of heartfelt passion.

A filmmaker releases a homemade film, and it is lampooned as a travesty. The filmmaker’s aspirations are mocked for their audacity.

A product contains a small instruction manual. We hope you enjoy it, it says. The product is met with a hail of criticism, and the designer is forced to resign.

What injustice is it, that we are humiliated for our attempts to stave off suffering? Even the pursuit of pleasure is the pursuit of the negation of pain, though these actions are so often portrayed as greed and entitlement. We cannot simply resign ourselves to being alone, or to being worthless—necessity lays out the few paths by which we can dodge this despair, so we try our best. But we punish each other when we fail. Necessity is cruel to all of us, and we are loath to be reminded of it.

 

IV

Conclusion

These tragedies are (and in a sense all tragedy is) a matter of striving. It’s the dissonance in life between things as they are, and things as we wish they were. It’s the failure, or futility, of hopes and aspirations, and the fact that we are forced to strive at all.

Striving implies possibility—the possibility of success, and the possibility of failure. Without striving there would be no tragedy. But neither would there be any hope or aspiration.