What if you felt their pain?
When you touch someone, you feel their pain. A handshake can tell you about their bad back.
She lets go of the wrist. The chart can wait.
Day 1
A nurse takes a patient’s pulse and flinches. The ache in his wrist is now in hers, for as long as her fingers stay there. She lets go.
People stop touching each other without thinking. A crowded train becomes a careful exercise in keeping your sleeves to yourself.
Year 1
Gloves become good manners, and a bare hand becomes a very personal question: are you hurt, and do you want me to know? Most doctors examine through cloth, but a few offer a bare hand to patients who are tired of not being believed.
Sports change their rules on contact. A foul that hurts now hurts twice.
Year 10
Kids learn early whose hand is safe to hold. A parent with a bad back gets hugged more carefully, or less often, and both of them notice.
The people everyone wants to be near are the ones who are healthy and don’t mind being touched.
Who wins
- Patients who weren’t believedOne hand on the arm ends the argument.
- People with invisible painFor a moment, someone else knows exactly how it feels.
Who loses
- Nurses, dentists and physiosTheir job now hurts in all their patients’ sore places.
- Crowded busesOne stranger brushes past and you feel their headache.
- People in chronic painA hug they need now hurts the person giving it.
- Contact sportsEvery tackle is a shared bruise.
Some people already feel an echo when they watch someone else being touched, but an echo isn’t a broken bone. Taking on another person’s pain at full strength would make touching anyone a risk, which may be why we never evolved it.
Would you want to feel what others feel?
More what-ifs
