What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez
Sigrid Nunez does not use a question mark after the title What Are You Going Through (2020). She has stated that she views the phrase not as a question but more like an assumption: “I know what you are going through because, like me, you are a human being.” The title and central idea of her book was inspired by the French philosopher and intellectual Simone Weil who observed that “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Ms. Nunez takes that idea and creates a story exploring the concept that the love of our neighbor, in all its fullness, simply means being able to say: What Are You Going Through. The author observes that while this sounds simple enough, it is morally quite complex, because the implication is that you are going to make yourself available to really listen to the response with full attention and complete empathy.
Responding with attention and empathy is challenging and the author’s characters convey this in a way that brings us all up short and makes us reassess how we react to those in pain. For instance, two of the book’s characters, a mother and her only child, a daughter, have never managed to get along. Blame runs through their dysfunctional relationship. The daughter has it fixed in her head that her father (whom she has never met) would have loved her better. That somehow, it is her mother’s fault that the father isn’t there. The mother has no idea how to deal with her daughter’s hostility and they become more and more alienated from each other. When the mom tries to talk to others about this tragic reality, she’s immediately dismissed. Responses include suppositions and generalizations like “All children love their mothers.” Another character, a woman in a cancer support group, tells group members her husband has lost all love for her and can’t wait for her to die. Their responses are similarly dismissive. No one sees her or identifies with her in a way that acknowledges her suffering or gives her comfort in the face of what she is experiencing.
Who of us has not at some point in our lives reached out for help only to receive platitudes and trite replies (“Just say no!” “Work smarter, not harder,” and my personal favorite, “Everything happens for a reason.”)? The beauty of Ms. Nunez’s book is that it presses readers to ask themselves: “What are you looking for when you share your pain with others?” And to go forward knowing that most of us would answer that we’re seeking friendship, compassion, care, and love in the midst of catastrophe and crisis.
Throughout her generous and wise narrative, Ms. Nunez addresses a variety of issues in addition to the extent to which we are able to empathize with others’ experiences. She prompts us to contemplate the likelihood of our continuation as a species, the struggle to use language to describe transformative moments, and the consequences of being unable to forgive, even when you acknowledge, intellectually, that you should. Too heavy? Not at all! Ms. Nunez’s sense of humor keeps What Are You Going Through from spiraling downward to a morass of misery, although some of her insights did make me weep, such as this quote, when the narrator’s friend who is dying of cancer, shares her observations.
“This is how it is with people, she tells me now. No matter what, they want you to keep fighting. This is how we’ve been taught to see cancer: a fight between patient and disease. Which is to say between good and evil. There’s a right way and a wrong way to act. A strong way and a weak way. The warrior’s way and the quitter’s way. If you survive you’re a hero. If you lose, well, maybe you didn’t fight hard enough.” [Kindle Version, p. 104]
