The Middle Lane

Some Thoughts Regarding the Philosophy of Suffering

In 007 — The Myth of An Easy Life, I wrote about how suffering makes one think chiefly of oneself. It’s as if the very periphery of one’s vision shrinks. And, if you think about it, it makes sense.

We navigate this life with the signature inability to truly ascertain the feelings, thoughts, and emotions of others. Yes, we may get a variety of cues between both verbal and nonverbal communications, but this is quite different than omniscience. No, you cannot, beyond all doubt, definitively capture someone else’s thoughts or feelings.

We’re too messy for that—a good litmus test being how often one has thought about something they forgot to say during a previous conversation. Much can be said about communication, but perhaps this captures it best:

It is incredibly difficult to articulate everything one wishes to through the course of any conversation. And, at best, communication is one of those tools requiring constant refinement, improvement, expansion, and overall use in order for it to be useful.

The only redeeming factor in this broader cognitive limitation is that human beings are usually empathetic creatures. We usually try our best to communicate in a truthful, empathetic, positive manner; and in a way that articulates as much as possible.

This is not the gold standard, though, as certain communications are undesirable—which is why the tool itself is contextual.

We want to understand, we want to know, and we feel bad about you feeling bad.

Yet, the glaring issue I was aiming to point out with Myth is that this empathy—a virtue trait—is often under direct threat whenever one enters into active suffering. A useful analogy might be how one reacts when one steps on a bear trap.

The shock and pain are immediate, and the pressure remains so long as one remains stuck. And, in a parallel with how overcoming trauma might endeavor, one must engage in the painful practice of someone else—if not the one—prying the bear trap open. Though painful, remaining at the mercy of the trap—in stasis—is to die there.

Be it bleeding out, starvation, shock, the elements, or infection—enduring the pain of prying it open is the only logical step forward.

We could run the metaphor down from immediately post-extrication to all the next steps be it first aid, calling for help, dragging oneself out of the woods, etcetera—but you get the point.

When the trap’s teeth sink down into your leg and snaps bone, the pain is what comes to the forefront of your mind. Survival becomes all you can think about. And this survival might look like panic, denial, hyperfocus, self-pity, screaming out in pain, crashing out, and the like.

To some degree, how could it not?

Now, while the discussion of prevention regarding avoidable sufferings in life is an important conversation to have, certain things are unavoidable—such as grief, illness, unchosen adversity or traumas, and the like. The point isn’t the suffering itself, because suffering is not unique. Comparing suffering as if ranking it on some macabre leaderboard is something I view as immoral by nature, because it minimizes the experiences of others.

No, the point is in the overcoming. It is in learning how to expand the periphery to the area surrounding the bear trap, as to focus less on the self and more on one’s life, one’s orbit, one’s community—and perhaps most importantly—one’s future.

If you can acknowledge the pain and accept accountability over having stepped in it—without blaming whoever placed the trap there, be it yourself or others—then surely you can push back against the shrinkage.

This is the stubborn unity Heraclitus would recognize:

It happened to me, and I walked the path that led here—two truths that refuse to cancel each other out.

Most of us, when the teeth sink in, try to resolve the tension by picking one lane and flooring it. The left lane is pure, woe is me, the world did this—I am only victim. And in this lane, the periphery collapses to the wound alone.

The right lane is the overcorrection—total ownership that curdles into self-flagellation. It is grace withheld even from oneself, refusing to accept or acknowledge the innate human flaws one must grow to overcome. Here, eventually the only thing left in view is your own failure.

The middle lane is narrower and harder to hold as it requires staying with both truths at once. It is the only perspective that can be sustained long-term, because it is the only one that finally peers beyond the trap.

A common enough sentiment from those who endure violation is, “it happened to me.”

Stay with me here.

This is true enough—one surely cannot assign blame to a victim under this context. The problem with the mindset is that, if dwelled in or adopted as operational capacity, it becomes self-defeating. Particularly, it works against one’s perspective of one’s agency, self-worth, and future.

This looking is rarely cinematic. It arrives, more often, as a small, stubborn turn of the head while the jaws are still clamped and the bone is still singing. You are still bleeding, still half-convinced the woods will swallow you, and yet you register the boot prints beside your own—the friend who hiked in without being asked, the stranger who stopped because they recognized the sound of metal on bone. For one breath you are not solely the man in the trap; you are also the man watching someone else exert themselves on your behalf.

The periphery has edged open, even if only by the width of a hand.

In the middle lane you do not dilute the pain to make it polite, nor do you sharpen it into a weapon turned against yourself. You let the sentence stand whole:

It happened to me, and I walked the path that led here.

Both halves stay raw, neither is allowed to become the whole story. This is the uncomfortable arithmetic of the tension presented by the unity—holding two truths that refuse to cancel each other without letting either one collapse into slogan. Self-pity is refused its throne; and self-flagellation is refused its whip. What remains is a quieter, steadier attention.

Here is where the expansion actually begins.

Not because the wound has healed, far from it. But because the wound is no longer granted the exclusive right to dictate what you see. Empathy, upon which suffering had encroached, breathes again.

You notice the quiet traps other people are carrying—the colleague whose voice cracks on the phone, the kid who is pretending the world is fine, the neighbor who has not asked for help in months. You notice them not as interruptions to your own recovery, but as part of the same woods you are still limping through.

The orbit reappears: the project you once cared about, the community you belong to, the future that is still waiting to be shaped rather than merely survived. Your view of each, no longer foreclosed.

This is a slow, unglamorous victory. The scar will remain; the limp may never fully disappear. But the horizon stops being relegated to a fate of scar tissue. Your life, your people, your next step—all of them come back into view not as distractions from the pain, but as the very reasons the pain was worth prying open for. The trap no longer owns the entire field of vision.

You do.

And from that wider field, something that looks suspiciously like character emerges.

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