Dearest Rachel –
It’s said that humans are, as a rule, narcissistic and self-centered, with no innate sense of empathy; whether that’s due to the Fall or something else, anyone is free to make theories about the underlying cause. It dismays me to go through these letters and see all the use of the first-person pronouns throughout it, when these were supposed to be to and about you, but that’s what happens when I’m stuck here on earth, while you’ve transcended your humanity.
In humanity’s defense, I will insist that part of that self-centeredness comes from being unable to perceive the world through anyone else’s eyes but our own. We can guess at the kind of pain and emotion that someone else is feeling in a given situation, but those guesses are only based on our own experience and how we think we would feel if we were in that same situation. Sometimes, even that’s not enough; two people enduring the same trial simultaneously will often have different reactions to it, based on their own experiences leading up to it. One might be traumatized in the moment, the other actually exhilarated. So it’s nearly impossible for us to develop the proper level of empathy for another person in their situation in life, because we simply can’t understand what they’re going through, even when we’re going through the same thing at the same time.
Does that make us selfish? You’d think we’d deserve credit for the effort, though.
I offer this strange preamble because I woke up this morning with a thought in my head that sounded particularly heartless even to me, but at the same time demanded to be released from my mind. Maybe there are others who agree about this; maybe there are those who just haven’t given the matter much thought, and might consider it. Then again, perhaps there are those who might be willing to enlighten me about what it is I don’t understand, and the best thing to do before launching into any diatribe in the first place is to offer a disclaimer that I realize that there are things I don’t understand, but I speak only from my own experience, however limited that may be.
That experience happens to be the fact that, at the moment, I’m waking up (early, as well, but that’s in part due to nodding off before even nine in the evening) for a second day in a row with this sharp pain in my foot. It’s not so bad that I can’t keep a blanket on (which is progress, especially since the early morning is still surprisingly chilly for June), but standing and walking is still rather painful, and there’s no real point in going to the gym, as I wouldn’t be able to accomplish much, weight training notwithstanding (on the plus side, my indolence hasn’t seemed to result in much in the way of weight gain thus far – my first step on the sale has been slightly less than the last couple of days, in fact – so that’s something. I’m still well above the two-ten mark, but that’s nothing new).
The thing is, as of last night, I’d started in on a prescription regimen of an anti-inflammatory medication and, to be honest, I was hoping for better results in terms of pain relief. At the same time, I’ve heard and read so many awful stories of people getting addicted to their prescriptions (pain medications, especially) that I don’t want to get too reliant on the stuff to manage the situation, so I’m not about to do more than I’ve been instructed to (which, in this case, happens to be a pill twice a day with meals – or what I count as meals, anyway).
Thus far, though, I can’t imagine how anyone gets addicted to pain medication – or maybe it’s just this medication. In theory, the idea makes sense – if you’re suffering from this or that, and you pop a pill, or take an injection, and the suffering dissipates, of course you’re going to want to keep that up, especially if and when the pain – any pain – returns. At the same time, that’s predicated on being able to connect the medication to the reduction of the pain. Given how we as humans are so into instant gratification, this means that, as soon as you swallow the pill, you can sense the reduction of the pain right away
This probably sounds like an unrealistic timeline, but we’ve been conditioned to expect these things to work almost like magic – and it would practically require a magical cure, in my mind, for someone to cling to a substance the way addicts appear to. It’s why, up until recently, I’ve never really had much use for coffee, since I never felt any great ‘pick-me-up’ effect with my first few sips of the stuff (although I will admit to acquiring the taste for it more than you ever did – not that that’s saying much), which is usually when I’ve needed it. Likewise for alcohol; what little I’ve ever consumed of it was never able to cause me to either black out or go wild and crazy, and the amount I would presumably have to drink in order to get to stereotypical ‘drunk’ levels were so voluminous as to be prohibitive, both to my wallet and my taste buds. So even legal drug consumption is beyond my ability to understand (although I’ve come to respect caffeine a bit more – three or four ice teas after a walk in the woods has proven to make falling asleep at night beyond difficult), let alone illicit or prescription substances, unless their effects were so near to instantaneous as to be practically magic (and isn’t that what Arthur C. Clark once said about sufficiently advanced science? Shouldn’t we have medications that work that fast by now?).
In this case, it’s decidedly not an instantaneous effect with the drug I’m taking. Yes, the pain is less this morning than it was yesterday, but it’s really not so much of a difference that I couldn’t just as easily attribute it to the passage of time, as well as the fact that I simply haven’t subjected my foot to the same stressors as I had on Tuesday. I’m not about to give all the credit – such as there is – to the medication.
Granted – and again, this is just “in theory” – I could see where some people might fuel their addiction even when the drug isn’t doing the job it ought to; they might assume they just need a higher dosage in order to achieve the desired result. Would I be feeling better if I’d taken a second pill last night with dinner? After all, I was recommended to take two a day, and I only had one yesterday; maybe I was simply underdoing my dosage?
Of course, that’s a rhetorical question; I didn’t pick up my prescription until mid-afternoon, so the pills were in my possession for only half the day. It would have been ridiculous to take more than the recommended dosage at any one time. And maybe that attitude toward responsible consumption is sufficient to preclude me from addiction, even as it prevents me from understanding those that fall into it. As with other such adverse life experiences, it’s probably better that I not, but it does cause me to be less empathetic to those who do. And there isn’t a pill to take for that, I shouldn’t wonder.
Anyway, those are my thoughts for the morning, as insensitive and selfish as they are, honey. If you’ll allow be a bit more such selfishness, I’d ask that you continue to keep an eye on me, too, and wish me luck, as I’m pretty sure I’ll need it, regardless.
Letters to Rachel 