We are wounded for no other reason than being here. Deeper than the scars of happenstance, prior to the hurt anyone inflicts, there is an ancient woundedness experienced and articulated in varied ways across time and culture. Buddha called this the first noble truth. Christ called this bearing your cross. Beyond religion this is simply the human experience, our common experience, and one we cannot seem to escape. Sentience is suffering. We wound because we are wounded. Learning true care for the self then is also a vital kind of wound care for the world. Out of touch with our woundedness, ignoring our innate aching, we are likely to find ourselves gravitating toward self-destructive behaviors, increasingly detached from others, and disconnected from any true sense of vocation. In touch with our woundedness, feeling this original aching, however, we might find ourselves circling round those who are also in touch with their woundedness, as empathy and compassion flourish naturally in the tilled soil of shared vulnerability.
Our woundedness is unbelievably delicate, sensitive to the touch, of others or even our own, at once needing care and yet all too easily wounded further because of its raw state. Knowing how to address a wound, and when to leave it alone untouched, is a matter often best left to the wisdom of the body. As most of us know from experience the will and the mind eventually reveal their impotence, our ability to mentally distance ourselves from our suffering extending only so far, mindfulness practices in the end exhausting, and practices of mindlessness though playful are finally not fruitful in tending to an eternal wound. While we cannot make magic to suddenly conjure a new point of view on our condition, and while changes in thought are seldom themselves the product of thought, as Michel Foucault noticed, we can at times find relief for our woundedness through the somatic: indirectly, ironically, our intangible aching cared for tangibly, the inner addressed through the outer, the spiritual through the physical, the incorporeal through the tactile, not a panacea but a healing balm nonetheless right there in some of the simplest of pleasures. A warm bath. Massage. The caress of a cool breeze across our closed eyes. There is more wisdom in your body than in your greatest philosophy Nietzsche knew, and wounded as we are we do well to listen closely and carefully to this most ancient of sources, its intuitions to walk and rest, diet and feast, grieve and enjoy.
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