“Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question of what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing ‘we’ can do — but who is that ‘we’? — and nothing ‘they’ can do either — and who are ‘they’ — then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.”
Susan Sontag
Saturday
Life is not always plain sailing and fair weather.
Shell has an injured back without an injury.
She was in so much pain last night she almost passed out.
This morning we find ourselves in the ER of Plauen Hospital.
We are seamlessly triaged, processed and in the system it makes you wonder if all the stereotypical German efficiency is actually bona fide.
The problem with the pain of others is how acutely aware you are of being helpless. You sit around waiting for a task so you can be put into some useful action.
The pain of someone you love is an unbearable burden. The utter uselessness of asking someone in terrible pain if they are ok wears thin after a dozen attempts. So you sit there, and do nothing.
A short drive to our next place. Dingolfing. Austria was too far in one trip.
Tomorrow we will find somewhere in the Austrian Alps to allow Shell to heal.
“It is a view of suffering, of the pain of others, that is rooted in religious thinking, which links pain to sacrifice, sacrifice to exaltation – a view that could not be more alien to a modern sensibility, which regards suffering as something that is a mistake or an accident or a crime. Something to be fixed. Something to be refused. Something that makes one feel powerless.”
Susan Sontag
The posts will be light on imagery the next few days.
