A film about pain
I recently watched Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain (which I highly recommend), and it stuck with me. Not just because of the film itself, but because of what it revealed about how we experience pain, both in ourselves and others.
The story follows David and Benji, two cousins who couldn’t be more different. David is reserved, structured, disciplined, and always planning ahead, trying to keep life neat and predictable. Benji is the opposite. He’s raw, warm, expressive, spontaneous, leaning fully into his emotions without much of a roadmap. On the surface, they seem completely incompatible, constantly clashing, misunderstanding each other at every turn. Yet they also see in each other what they lack, and secretly want to be like the other person.
As the film unfolds, something becomes clear: both of them are in pain. David’s anxiety is fueled by a fear of losing control or falling short of expectations. Benji’s pain comes from feeling lonely and unseen, like he’s always one step away from being truly understood. They just express it differently.
That got me thinking. It’s so easy to judge people whose struggles look different from ours. We write them off as “too emotional” or “too sensitive” or “too rigid” or “too full of themselves” without considering what’s beneath the surface. We get caught up in how someone expresses their pain instead of recognising that they’re in pain.
Seeing the invisible, but real, pain in us
Later that night, I saw this play out in real life. Walking home past a supermarket, I saw an elderly woman trip and fall. She was bleeding. Instantly, strangers (including me) rushed to offer help. No hesitation. No overthinking. We all just acted. Because physical pain is obvious. It demands a response.
But what about emotional pain? When someone stumbles internally (when they’re overwhelmed, lonely, anxious) why isn’t our instinct to rush forward in the same way? Maybe because emotional pain is quieter, buried under layers of social norms, expectations, obligations, self-protection, and unspoken rules about “holding it together.”
And that got me asking myself harder questions.
How often have I dismissed someone’s struggle because it wasn’t immediately visible?
How many times have I ignored my own pain because it didn’t seem “serious enough” to warrant care?
How many times have I resented someone for being “selfish” or “drama” when, deep down, I had just gotten used to neglecting my own needs, suppressing my own truth, and denying my difficult emotions?
The truth is, we all carry some form of invisible pain. Anxiety about the future. Regret about the past. Loneliness in a crowded room. The longing to be fully seen. None of it is insignificant. And maybe real compassion starts when we stop measuring pain against the arbitrary standards we’ve set in our own minds — when we stop deciding which struggles are “valid” and which ones aren’t.
Learning to see, to hold, and to love our pain
So here’s the challenge I’m sitting with:
How can we get better at seeing each other’s invisible struggles?
How do we create space for pain, even when it’s messy, even when it doesn’t look like ours?
And maybe most importantly, how do we start offering that same compassion to ourselves, to allow our pain and ourselves to be truly seen?
No neat answers here. Just an invitation to notice. To pause before judging. To lean toward understanding. Maybe that’s how we turn everyday interactions into moments of real connection. Maybe that’s how we make space for each other in a world that so often rushes past unseen pain.
This post was first published on Substack.
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