THE WEIGHT OF THINGS

My back went out in Nashville two months ago. It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt. I could not move. I was in agony.

To complicate matters it was my girlfriend’s birthday and we were in Nashville on a kind of celebratory holiday (my birthday was a week earlier.) My back had been feeling tweaky and strange for a few weeks leading up to our trip but I was basically able to get around. That night, we had been lying down for a rest before our dinner reservation and when I tried to get out of bed I found I couldn't move. Even walking to our rental car was not going to be possible. We made a quick pivot. My girlfriend ran out to get us burgers (shout out to Dino's) while I writhed in agony on the bed and screamed into a pillow. 

My girlfriend had reached out to her friend Dr. John Amaral for guidance and he left me an incredibly helpful voice-note. He said that I was currently in an adversarial relationship with the pain, which was understandable. He urged me to stop resisting the pain, to let it wash through me and overtake me. Much of my suffering, he said, was in the resistance to what was happening. I had to accept and, on some level, welcome the pain. His words gave me some relief and I was able to make it through the night.

Friends helped us find a doctor to come to the hotel the following day and after getting a steroid shot, an anti-inflammatory, a muscle relaxer, and two different types of painkillers we were able to switch hotels (long story) and I then spent the next three days in bed until we could get back to Los Angeles. 
 
It was the opposite of fun. 
 
The pain wasn’t the worst of it. I’ve historically had a hard time being sick, feeling useless, letting myself be taken care of, all of which I had no choice but to do. My girlfriend was incredible throughout the whole ordeal but letting her see me in that state proved nearly as painful as the actual pain. 
 
I eventually was able to move with some delicacy but the next few weeks were intensely difficult. I felt rattled and emotionally fragile. It was hard for me to locate my natural optimism. I feared I was facing something chronic and debilitating, that this might be the onset of a truly terrible chapter in my life with no end in sight. I went pretty dark and then felt bad about going dark. (Feelings have never really been my problem. It’s the feelings I have about my feelings that take me out.)

A book that comes up with great regularity among those who’ve struggled with back, neck, and shoulder pain is Healing Back Pain by Dr. John Sarno. People whisper the name of the book and author like it’s a sacred incantation. (Finding others who’ve had back pain is, I’ve learned, incredibly easy. It felt like everyone I told about what happened to me had a similar story. It’s a tribe I never wanted to join but there’s some comfort in knowing I’m not alone.)
 
Dr. Sarno’s central and somewhat radical thesis is that 80% of back problems are not due to anything structural (herniated disks, sciatica, etc) Rather there are emotions that we somewhere along the way learned were not acceptable to express (namely anger, sadness, and grief) and our brains – attempting to do us a favor – give us pain in order to distract us from feeling them. The brain’s reasoning is that it is safer and preferable to experience physical pain than emotional pain. Certainly for many men it’s easier to admit to a physical injury than it is to say you’re struggling emotionally or psychologically. 
 
Sarno never hyphenates mindbody. He says they’re one and the same, that we cannot untangle them. He claims that the cure for most back pain is knowledge. Learning the nature of what truly ails us is the biggest step in the healing process. He urges people to start thinking psychologically rather than physically. (For more info on Dr. Sarno and his work check out TMS Wiki or this still much-discussed 20/20 segment)
 
This would all sound like New Age quackery were it not for the fact that countless people have had their back pain eradicated simply by reading Sarno’s book. No physical therapy. No medication. No surgery or chiropractic adjustments. Simply by accepting his central thesis – that I am sitting on a powder keg of unprocessed and unfelt emotions which are manifesting as pain in my body – people’s pain tends to dissipate if not disappear altogether.
 
My pain didn’t suddenly leave my body as I read his words. But my despair lifted. Something about his philosophy rang true to me and I suddenly saw that I could heal. And that was enough.

(To be clear: I do not believe that all illness is emotionally generated or the result of misaligned thought. I think that's actually a dangerous idea, one that Susan Sontag brilliantly demolishes in her classic essay "Illness as Metaphor." That said, I am inclined to believe that certain physical ailments like back pain can have a deep emotional component.) 

During the worst of it, I thought about a dear friend of mine who lives with chronic pain. I realized I never quite understood what daily life must be like for her and so many others who live with pain every single day. My empathy was purely an intellectual exercise until I myself was laid out. There was something about the pain I experienced that opened my heart and increased my capacity for compassion for others who are suffering. 
 
I want to be careful not to overstate this lest I sound like someone who didn’t eat for a day and claims he now understands something deep about world hunger and poverty. It was more like a spiritual insight. When the use of my body left me for a time I felt some kind of communion with the greater pain that’s out there at all times. My individual pain gave me deeper insight into the collective pain. 
 
We’re taught to fear and avoid suffering at every turn. But it’s been my experience that if you’re a human being, suffering is on the menu. The question for me is: How can I get a different relationship to that inevitable suffering? Rather than howling at the heavens in anger at my fate, can I locate the deeper message this suffering might be carrying? Where does the invitation lie to step into some new way of thinking, feeling, and being?

I take in a lot of news. I tell myself I can digest all of it somewhat dispassionately but that's simply not true. I am a sensitive person and I am affected by what I'm reading. I would have to be a heroic compartmentalizer to not be. Despair is an understandable and perhaps inevitable byproduct of a daily inhalation of accounts of the world's pain. 

Much has been written about how ill-equipped our brains are to hold and process the vast amounts of information the internet has made available to us. How are we - with these maladapted nervous systems - to bear the pain of the world?

For some of us the pain of the world shows up as depression, for some anxiety, for some addictions, for some anger and control, for others it manifests in their bodies as physical pain or ailments. 
 
I think the pain in my back was many things. There were issues in my life, as Sarno would say, asking to be acknowledged, confronted, and given voice. But I’m also convinced that many of my ‘uncomfortable emotions’ were things outside my own circumstance about which I have no control. Climate-change-anxiety is an uncomfortable emotion. Afghanistan is an uncomfortable emotion. Will-Trump-run-and-win-again is an uncomfortable emotion. Vaccine-refusal-and-medical-misinformation is an uncomfortable emotion. What-if-this-pandemic-never-ends-or-another-one-is-on-its-way is an uncomfortable emotion.
 
I don’t want to get stuck in hopelessness or despair. But I also don’t want to bypass or repress what is truly going on and how uncomfortable and sometimes frightening it can be to take it all in. Because I now know the cost and it is too high: I won’t be able to walk. 

(This essay by Carvell Wallace is the best thing I've read on the existential difficulty of the present moment, by the way. It made me feel less alone.)
 
Like so many others I've been having a hard time of it lately. I am acutely aware of the weight of things. My body was screaming at me to develop healthier practices for holding all of it. Part of that practice for me is saying out loud to someone I trust that I’m having a hard time. And for them to not prescribe anything, to not try to fix or change me, but rather simply hear me. To say “I get it.” And perhaps: “Same with me.”
 
In that shared space lies the beginning of healing. When the masks of okayness are dropped and we can weep or scream without fear of judgment or condemnation. When the obvious is not denied or repressed but rather acknowledged and honored. 
 
I know the current challenges won't last forever. Nothing ever does. A new way forward will reveal itself. But until it does I have to be honest about how difficult this moment feels and forge connections with others who are feeling it too.

So to anyone out there going through a tough time, I can offer no predictions or panaceas, no mantras or meditations. The best I can offer is this:

I get it. Same with me. 

If you have not yet read Jennifer Senior's stunning piece on Bobby McIlvaine and his family PLEASE give it a read. And allow ample time afterwards for tears and reflection. Its the best thing I've read in ages. 

I Was Powerless Over Diet Coke: After almost 40 years as a diet-soda addict, my body suddenly started to reject my favorite feel-good companion. 

I saw a sneak preview of Wet Hot American Summer twenty years ago before its theatrical release. I thought it was one of the funniest movies I'd ever seen. Critics trashed it. They've now reconsidered things. 
 
My dear friend Elliott Holt wrote this fantastic piece for the New York Times Magazine outlining a new approach to reading poetry.

This Camonghne Felix profile of Simone Biles is a real stunner. 

Craig Thomas, one half of the brains behind HIMYM, wrote this piece (Basic Training for Your Pandemic Puppy) for McSweeney's that, like with all things Craig writes, made me laugh.

This really affected me: Tree of Life: American are refusing vaccines because they've forgotten that children dying of infectious diseases is natural. 

This is so so good: "I'm Embarrassed by My Dream!" If you believe in melting boundaries through art, stop indulging your neuroticism and practice your religion with conviction. 

Check out my friend Ciela Wynter's soulful new track Cocoon for some inspiration.

This profile of the author Lauren Groff in The Atlantic is excellent and her short story "The Wind" bowled me over. 

Terrific interviews with Michael Keaton and Martin Short as well as a remembrance of the great Michael K. Williams by David Simon. 
 

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