Or, No Suffering is Special
You see it on TV all the time. The Police Detective meets the Murder Victim's Widow, and says, "ma'am, I know how you feel, but if you could just answer a few questions...". And the Widow turns on him, eyes red from weeping, and replies, "you don't know how I feel! Nobody knows how I feel! I just lost my husband! You can't understand my pain!" Etc.
And to a certain extent, she's right. Her pain is special. Her experience is unique. But her emotions are common to all humanity.
There are ten thousand different ways in which human emotions may be drawn out. But there aren't that many human emotions to choose from, and everybody has felt them all, at one point or another in their lives. I suspect that human infants have learned everything they need to know, about the human experience--its ineffable joyous heights, its horrible desparing depths--before they learn to talk, or walk, or even crawl. I suspect that it is this early knowledge, carried through life, that makes empathy with our fellow humans possible, more than any specific experience later on.
Of course, each human experience is unique to that unique human. Ironically, this very uniqueness (uniquity?) works against the idea of special suffering. One woman's husband may be another man's dog may be a child's favorite toy may be the child himself, to his mother.
The thing lost might be different in every case, but the sense of loss is common to all of us. You may say I don't know your pain, but you are wrong. I do know your pain. I know pain, and fear, and doubt. I've lost things dear to me. I've felt hope, and had that hope crushed. I've suffered, not in the exact same way that you have, but I've suffered nonetheless. We all have. We celebrate each others' joyous occasions, joining in our neighbor's sense of happiness and contentment. In the same way, we can share in each other's suffering. How wonderful it is, to realize that your neighbor does understand your pain! It is this shared understanding of pain that allows us to comfort each other in our darkest hours.
When my wife suffers, I know what comforts her in part because I know her well, but also in part because I know suffering well, and I know comfort, too.
"I know how you feel," is an expression of solidarity, a heartfelt reminder that even in loss, there is community, companionship, people around you who can share your burden and ease your pain. It is an invitation to rejoin humanity at our best, our community and shared experience. In rejecting this invitation, the Widow expressses something of humanity at our worst. Selfishness, fueled by grief, lyingly tells her that her loss makes her alone, that it cuts her off from the rest of us. But this isn't true at all. The sooner she accepts the Detective's sincere outreach, lets him hug her, and cries on his shoulder, the sooner the Detective can ask her a few questions and solve the damn murder mystery already. And in the end, that's all I'm asking.
I know you feel me on this.
Edit: Recategorized as "Personal Relationships - General Discussion", on the sound advice of PacDragon. Thanks, man!