I have always been bad with pain. The tiniest cut, from an early age, brought
forth howls of despair. Usually, this would be followed by requests for
bandages, the bigger the better. At
times my mother was placing bandages on wounds that were so small she could not
even see them. As I grew older, I became
aware that I had a remarkably low pain threshold. Watching other children in school fall and
bleed only to get up and run off amazed me.
As I progressed through adolescence my mother would remark, “What on
earth are you going do when you have to give birth?” It was one of those questions that an
adolescence feels a parent asks just to manipulate you. Akin, to her other favourite, “You must learn
to cook and clean now because one day you will have your own house!” To this I always smugly replied, “Don’t
worry, I’ll always have servants!” This
must have been particularly abrasive to my sweet mother who carried trays of
breakfast to all of us in bed every morning, while Don Williams filled the
house with his songs. I only have to
hear one of his songs to find myself hungering for tea and toast on a tray.
Being a coward about pain I asked everyone
about what giving birth was really like.
One said it was the most amazing experience of her life. Another babbled on about this small baby and
how beautiful it was. A third said
ominously that one soon forgets the pain.
My mother said, in her day, you were expected to give birth in silence,
a slight whimpering was tolerated but not for long. You were expected to approach birthing in a
ladylike way. She looked at me with a
forlorn expression before repeating, “I really don’t know how you will ever get
through it!” When I was pregnant people
became much more honest. One friend told
me it was like having a knife plunged into your innards and twisted. This was altogether too frighteningly honest
I felt.
True to form, I was racing to hospital with
every little twinge convinced the birth was imminent. Surely, such excruciating squeezes meant the
baby was on their way. Medical staff
said, in ominous tones, I would know it when the real contractions began. Then, when the murderous contractions
actually kicked in I understood exactly what they meant. I distinctly remember not being ladylike about the whole business. When asked about pain relief, I retorted
“give me everything you’ve got and if that doesn’t work get a big club and
knock me out”. At one point, I remember clearly instructing the medical staff
to cut off my head and haul the baby out that way.
My sister-in-law had
an even more painful birth but within a matter of hours was saying she would be
happy to have another baby soon. It was
as if her memory had selectively eradicated all the pain and suffering. Today when reading a book, it suddenly all
made sense. It is by Daniel Kahneman, a
Nobel Prize winner, entitled Thinking Fast and Slow. It helps you understand why we make the
choices we do in life. In one section
they carry out an experiment on a group of subjects. The experiment was simple; each person would
have their hand immersed in cold water 14 degrees for 60 seconds and at the end
would be given a warm towel. The second
experiment lasted 90 seconds, the first 60 seconds was identical to the first
and then for the last 30 seconds warm water would be bringing the temperature
up by one degree. The third experiment
subjects were told would be a repeat of either the short or long
experiment. They were allowed to choose
which. A surprising 80% chose the 90
second immersion. Despite this being
obviously longer that the first. What
was going on? According to Kahneman,
“The subjects who
preferred the long episode were not masochists and did not deliberately choose
to expose themselves to the worst experience; they simple made a mistake. They chose to repeat the episode of which
they had the less aversive memory. Their
decision was governed by a simple rule of intuitive choice: pick the option you
like the most, or dislike the least.”
We are strongly
influenced by the peak and the end. That
feeling of warming water was such a relief after the pain of the cold it
managed to over-ride our rational brain.
Obviously, endings when dramatic/traumatic enough reach parts of our
brain that have little to do with rational fact but are emotionally
powerful. Our intuition has lead us to
make a mistake. So too, the pain of
giving birth when followed by the joy of a baby is simply edited out.
I used to find when
teaching a class you could give a truly awful 40-minute lesson, boring, stilted
with little content and follow it with a five-minute exciting game to end. The classes would invariably close with kids laughing
delightedly and a feeling that the lesson had been brilliant. They had been fooled by the end. It had dominated their experience and effectively
wiped out the previous dire 40 minutes.
This influence also indicates why coping with dementia or a pain filled
death etc. creates such an overriding despair in relatives. A whole lifetime is forgotten and the agony
of the last months or years over rides everything. It almost manages to wipe out every joyous
memory of a loved one.
Our intuition is a
powerful tool but also a flawed one, on occasion. Or, as Kahneman puts it,
“It seems an
inconsistency is built into the design of our minds.”
Our memory has evolved
to register the most intense moment (pain or pleasure the peak) and the
feelings at the end of the episode. This
neglect of the duration will not serve our desire for pain to be short and
pleasure to last. In other words our
instinctive preferences may be seriously flawed. He ends with this warning.
“This is a bad case of
duration neglect. You are giving the
good and the bad part of your experience equal weight, although the good part
lasted ten times as long as the other.”
My wish for you - May
your pain be ever short and your pleasure exceedingly long!
