Working Through Pain

"We read to know we're not alone." That's a line from the 1993 film Shadowlands, which starred Anthony Hopkins as the writer C. S. Lewis. Lewis didn't come up with that line; it was one of his students, who in turn was quoting his father. But those words hit a nerve with Lewis in the film, and they hit a nerve with me. When I first heard them, I realized that, besides my love of good writing, one of the main reasons I read is unconditional companionship. Another is validation.

There was a time, during my years in Houston, I went through a prolonged depression of a kind I had never before experienced and have never again since. Although well aware of what had triggered it, I was at rather a loss as to how to pull myself out of it, other than writing a good deal in my journal. Mind you, this was all prior to my religious "reversion," so I really did feel alone despite my good friends. Comes a point when you no longer want to prevail upon your friends' sympathy for fear of wearing it thin.

On the worst days, I found myself getting in my car and sitting there for long minutes, wondering where I wanted to go. Sometimes I wound up going to a music store, where I'd spend an hour perusing the racks of CDs, picking up around ten or so, only to put them all back and leave the store as empty-handed as I entered. More often than not, I went to a bookstore. I would weave in and out of the stacks of fiction and biography (for some reason, I've always spurned so-called "self help" books), trying to find a story similar to my own, so that I would know I wasn't alone. I did find something once in a while that had elements similar to my experience, which helped—sometimes I'd be comforted; other times, I'd end up actually laughing at myself. If it were fiction, it interested me to see how the author treated the particular situation I identified with, how he depicted the character, whether or not I thought he "got it right." If it were a biography, a diary, or correspondence, I of course felt a stronger connection, it being someone else's true life experience. Either way, books provided the companionship and validation I so badly needed.

In the film, however, Lewis comes to realize that reading is not experience. Reading can't teach you what experience can teach you. Most importantly, he discovers that, in substituting reading for experience, he was subconsciously avoiding the inevitable pain that experience can sometimes bring. In the end, his own words come back to him: "Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world." So he decides to open his heart to experience, and to the healing power of pain.

It wasn't long after that period of depression that I rediscovered my faith. God is a patient suitor; he waits until you're ready before he endows you with that precious gift. There was indeed much pain to work through. Maybe he knew, given my love of words, that I had to read about it first before I was able to face and experience it truthfully in myself.