There is a long ago story of a young man who wished to learn the jade industry. He went to the shop of an old merchant, and asked for help. The old man said nothing, but pointed to a chair. Next, he placed into the lad’s hand a piece of jade. The old man said simply “You sit. You rub. You feel.” At the end of the day, the man retrieved his jade and told the boy, “You home now. Again tomorrow come.”
For many days this went on, and the boy’s frustration mounted. He wanted the old man to instruct him, speak to him. But each day, the old man insisted, “You sit, you rub, you feel.”
Finally, one morning before sitting down, he saw the old one come towards him with a stone. “I don’t want this! I want to learn…! He stopped suddenly and gasped, “This is not jade!” The master had handed the lad a stone identical in all respects to the jade he had been holding all these days; all ways but one: the feel.
There were no phrases, no adjectives, nothing that have taught the boy what his hand now knew. He now knew the feel of jade.
Several years ago, a woman, three days out from abdominal surgery, presented to the ED with pain. I examined her, found nothing but the to-be-expected soreness, and ordered pain meds. She was medicated but continued to scream, to the point of disturbing nearby patients. The pain seemed disproportionate to the reality, but these are difficult reckonings to make.
Her nurse went in to tell her that the meds she had received would take effect momentarily, and in the meanwhile, try to be less vocal.
“You don’t understand,” she continued to rant, “You can’t know! You’ve never had surgery!” [An interesting comment in that my patient had just met my nurse.]
To which my nurse simply lifted her smock and showed her four abdominal scars from previous surgeries. “Oh, I guess I do understand.” The patient stared and fell silent – and stayed that way.
So, why tell these stories? Times of high emotion, be they joy or be they sorrow, are difficult to convey to the sense of another so that the listener now knows what the speaker is feeling; such is our essential separateness as human beings.
Empathy, sympathy and imagining, while among the most precious of human impulses, are not synonyms for knowing. Because of our inherent isolation from each other, I cannot, no matter how much I may wish it so, enter your heart to feel your pain or joy as you do. The exception to this is if I have experienced the same loss or joy as you have, the birth of a child, the loss of a loved one, war, etc.
I often hear people say, “I can just imagine your [joy or sorrow.”] And, there’s nothing wrong with that as long as we don’t confuse imagining with knowing.
Imagining lets us off too easily, it scores but a faint creasing on the surface of reality. There’s but one way to the heart of the matter. We must have gone through the same joy or sorrow ourselves; we must have ‘experienced the jade.’ There are some things which cannot be known from the neck up.
For instance, when I lost my beloved Doberman ‘Rock,’ I also became credentialed to know what that particular loss must be like for others. I need not imagine, it takes no cognitive effort on my part to conceive of the gaping hole left in one’s heart, I merely have to remember the loss of my Rock.
For I know the feel of that jade.
Look for Lucky’s books locally and on-line: The Oath of Hippocrates; The Cotillian; A Journey Long Delayed; Campfire Tales; Sabonics.
