The pit of despair and the pool of happiness are bottomless. Which means you and I can both suffer and revel in glee to any degree without limiting the pain and joy of others.  

My partner works in the emergency department (ED) and I used to work there too (that’s where we met). From time to time, our non-healthcare friends will ask, “So if I have to go to the ED, what should I say so my wait is shorter?” When this classic question is asked, my partner and I glance at each other and smirk. Anyone who has worked in the ED can tell you that you don’t want to be the first person to go back to a room from the waiting room…because the people who don’t have a wait are the people most likely to never walk out of the hospital.

No one wants to go to the hospital. It is miserable to be there as a patient. But, let’s say you go to the ED because you broke your arm skiing. Your arm is painful. The friend who accompanied you to the hospital is desperately trying to help you stay calm while also struggling to maintain their own composure because the odd angle of your arm makes them sick to their stomach. While you and your friend wait in the ED, there are others who have been in the hospital for days and there are some who have been there moments; in each of these groups of patients there are people who will die during their hospital stay. I tell you this not to diminish the suffering of your broken arm. I tell you simply to say that we don’t suffer alone. Your broken arm is not made less painful by the heart attack and death of Mr. Doe that occurred while you waited in the ED, but his death might remind you that we do not all suffer to the same degree during a particular patch of time.

The same goes for happiness. Some of the joys of this COVID era are the baby announcements, the engagements, the house improvements finally complete, the adopted fuzzy friends, and the fitness goals achieved. My social media feeds are full of cute kittens, puppies, and shiny rings. One of the things I love about all these great landmarks in my friends’ lives is that the engagement of one friend does not detract from the puppy adoption of another. It turns out that my friend with a fiancé can be dreamy about their forever while my other friend can melt with love for their new puppy.

I think the infinity of the pit of despair and the pool of happiness are important to keep in mind. You can take as much as humanly possible from both or either and there will still be a limitless amount for the next person. Not many things in life are that way.

Since the COVID pandemic started and the death of George Floyd there has been arguing among individuals and over the news about the validity and gravity of the pain and inequity experienced by different groups in America. The argument goes some like, “I’ve also had a hard life. I’ve suffered from injustice. So, I don’t see why their hardship and the inequity they face is special.”

The suffering you’ve faced does not neutralize the suffering of others. The suffering you’ve experienced does not lessen the burden of suffering for the rest of humanity. Suffering and happiness have no bounds. The argument for equity is not that your suffering does not matter. Your suffering does matter. The argument for equity is that the systems we’ve developed so far to organize our government, personal lives, education, and work make it harder for certain people to access the pool of happiness while at the same time making the pit of despair easier to fall into. The underpinning of equity is simply that there should be no gatekeeper to happiness and no funnel to despair and, therefore, where they exist they should be eliminated.