I woke up "withered". Why am I like this? I already know: it's hair wash day! I take a deep breath whenever I remember that appointment. It is a mixture of anxiety, fear, hope and anguish. “How will I react? Will it fall off more or less than the last wash?” I wonder. I try not to think about it as I go through each small commitment in my day until the big moment arrives.
“It's time” and the minutes drag by, I take a deep breath, close my eyes and turn on the shower. I feel my heart speed up, I try to calm down… “I know I’m not alone!” The lump in my throat slowly eases and my heart returns to its normal rhythm. Shampoo… Hair… Conditioner… Hair… Comb… Hair. Losses, losses, losses! What's going down the drain? What am I trying to hold? Frustration, pain, tears… Calm and, once again, hope. Suffering? No more like before! “Next wash will be better.” Whether it really will be, I don't know. But there is the possibility and so I continue: some days it falls more, other days it falls less; hair is born, hair falls out and that's life.
The way I relate to my hair shows me, above all, how unpredictable our existence is. And that makes me think: what guarantee do I have that when I wash my hair, it won't fall out? Okay, from the point of view of science there is always an explanation for when it falls and when it doesn't. In fact, if there's one thing that science has, it's an explanation for everything. I would say more and I am inspired by Heidegger to say this: science tries to shape everything and even succeeds. It just doesn't circumvent existence because it is unavoidable.
Despite knowing all the scientific “whys” of my fall (androgenetic alopecia and stress fall) the answers that science gives me are not enough to stop the discomfort in the face of the unpredictable — “What if I fall more today?” — and, consequently, the pain of loss — “How to deal with it?”
Even doing treatment the way the dermatologist ordered and following the nutritionist's tips, my hair escapes me. Pain, suffering! And, at a given moment in my life, as soon as it comes, the fall goes away and then comes back. So I'm intrigued: “I give up trying to understand. Where am I wrong and right?”. Guilt, and once again, suffering! I suddenly realize that I can even try to control this “game”, but I will never master it. Not even medicine with its infallible tricks can. And just like this game, so is life: it is a mystery, a question without an answer, surprise, unpredictability at every moment.
We all know that life is unpredictable, but it seems difficult to understand that wanting is not power. And I grew up listening to that phrase from my mother! And so we keep making plans and trying, at any cost, to transform wanting into power even when it's not a possibility for us. So, we suffer for not having what we want, for thinking that deserving is enough to have.
The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard invites us to think of pain and suffering not as synonyms, but pain as sadness, grief, pity. And suffering, or “pain of pain” — as Fogel, my teacher and philosopher, says — emerging from this mismatch between what you want and what you can actually have. To illustrate better, Feijoo, another teacher and psychologist, says that pain “is that which a child is taken by when something hits him, and the sadness is infinitely deep.” Suffering would be when “the adult suffers not only with the pain, but with the fact that he/she lives the pain”. In other words: pain is the thorn in the flesh, and suffering is pain because you have the thorn.
Bringing to my experience: pain is hair loss, the thorn in the flesh. The suffering is experiencing the pain of falling with each wash, because I don't have what I want so much: the end of hair loss. We are taken by suffering when we can't accept that things happen the way they do, because we believe it should be different for the simple fact that we don't deserve it.
It is important to note that acceptance is not the same as accommodation — I keep taking care of my curls. However, it is quite true that, in times of “Yes, we can!”, we believe that we can (and even must) do anything, if we just make an effort to do so. Really? For years, I've been striving to have beautiful hair and…
CALM! This text is not to discourage you, but it is also not a manual that dictates “the 5 steps to stop suffering”. By the way, if anyone knows of this manual, please let me know! I know he doesn't exist, because each existent is unique.
What I can say about pain and suffering in the context of hair loss is that there has been a “turn of the key” and the all-too-recurring question “why me?” became “why not me?”. After all, if I have hair, there's always the possibility that I don't. By the way, this is a possibility for everyone, isn't it? Therefore, the pain of hair falling out is inevitable, but the suffering that is configured in the desperate struggle trying to escape this pain, no longer exists, at least not with such force.
After much suffering, something happened—I don't know exactly what. I've learned to live with what I can't change and, to my surprise, it hasn't been a burden. I began to understand the vulnerability of my existence and its finite and inescapable character. — as Heidegger emphasizes. Exactly! I'm not made of iron and I can't do everything I want. This is frustrating and equally liberating. I stopped fighting what I can't control and accepted that if life and pain are inseparable, it would be no different in this context.
Carlos Drummond de Andrade says that: “Every day that I live, I am more convinced that the waste of life is in the love we do not give, in the forces we do not use, in the selfish prudence that risks nothing and that, avoiding suffering , we also lost happiness. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
I agree that pain is inevitable. Kierkegaard goes further and claims that she is of the order of life. The pain of pain (suffering), for the philosopher, would be the revolt against the pain that man originally is. Drummond highlights suffering as being optional and I ask myself: “If I choose to suffer or not to suffer, then wanting is power”. But, as stated above, we believe that will and possibility do not always go hand in hand. Had Drummond been wrong? No! I think he mentions the “optional” as a suffering that can be experienced in other ways than just in the mode of lamentation. Suffering that can be taken care of, thus expanding other possibilities of dealing with the pain of pain.
Accepting pain and visualizing other ways of experiencing suffering are not an obligation. I think they are just another way of dealing with something that we cannot change, because as Heidegger points out: what makes us live also makes us hurt. And this is life: it is unpredictability, finitude, breath, possibility, mystery, unanswered question.
And you, what is running down the drain of life? What have you been trying to hold back? Remember if: the pain of what flows is inevitable. As for the suffering of what we try to hold on to at any cost, for this, it is possible that there are other ways of experiencing the situation.
