THE GREAT EQUALIZER

Affliction is a great equalizer. It makes us all brothers and sisters in a very special way. Almost anyone who has ever shared a hospital room remembers their roommate; they have traveled together in the fellowship of suffering, and even if they never see each other again, they often feel uniquely close. This is partly because pain treats us all alike. It's easier to endure sickness in a private room than in a ward, but when you have to depend on a nurse or an aide for bedpan and bathing, it makes no difference whether you're rich or poor, learned or ignorant. And if you're accustomed to being independent, the burden may be all the harder to bear.

In 1893, shortly after Grover Cleveland had come into his second term in the presidency, it was discovered that he had cancer of the throat and jaw. National leaders feared that if his illness became public knowledge, the shaky financial condition of the country might grow into a full panic. So they arranged for a medical team to join the president on a yacht, and skilled surgeons operated as the craft rolled up the East River. "If you must have surgery," someone might say, "that's the way to have it." Perhaps. But Cleveland wrote later, "I have learned how weak the strongest man is under God's decree; and I see in a new light the necessity of doing my allotted work in the full apprehension of the coming night."

Pain is a great equalizer. Peasant or president, rich or poor, the dimensions are pretty much the same.

-- J. Ellsworth Kalas in If Experience Is Such a Good Teacher Why Do I Keep Repeating the Course?


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