Unseen, Unheard, Unacknowledged: The Suffering Around Us
The Pain We Refuse to See
Have you ever felt trapped in your own body?
Not just trapped — caged. No distractions. No escape.
Perhaps it’s the weight of chronic pain. The kind that can’t be seen, the kind no test can prove. It takes everything just to get through the day, and still, the world expects you to perform.
It’s strange how quickly empathy disappears when suffering hides beneath the surface. A person on crutches will have doors held open, seats offered, patience extended. But someone with fibromyalgia? They are told to push through. To “get over it.”
We have made visibility the requirement for compassion. If we cannot see it, we act as if it isn’t real.
Consider the women in our lives. The monthly cycle, largely dismissed or joked about. Or those with endometriosis, enduring pain that defies simple explanation — invisible, yet debilitating. And what of women trapped in abusive relationships, whose pleas to authorities are ignored, sometimes until it’s too late? Only when tragedy strikes does the world acknowledge their suffering.
Why does human empathy require this threshold of visible harm? Perhaps because witnessing pain makes us uncomfortable. Inflicting it, by contrast, seems far easier.
The Suffering of Non-Human Animals
And the pattern extends beyond our species. Animals, with personalities as vivid and complex as our own, are treated as commodities. We love them, yes — in ways that entertain us or serve us. But their suffering is ignored, hidden behind fences, cages, and factory walls.
There are all 85.4 billion land animals slaughtered each year, all who, without a doubt, fought for their lives. They endure confinement, deprivation, electric shocks, gas chambers, boiling, throat slitting — horrors beyond human comprehension. Yet it’s only when one escapes, frantically running through streets, desperate for an ounce of familiarity, an ounce of safety, that we collectively pause, notice, and ask for mercy.
We have normalized cruelty on this scale, and our disconnection has allowed it. Convenience, habit, and distraction have become excuses to look away from the suffering we inflict.
Invisible Suffering: Humans Too
The truth is uncomfortable: we wait to see the worst of suffering before responding. We bury loved ones and only then understand their value. We hear of suicides and say, “I didn’t know,” or, “I wish they had reached out.” Yet most beings who suffer show signs — they signal, they scream, they fight. We simply fail to look, until it is no longer our problem.
Globally, over 1.5 billion people suffer from chronic pain (bu.edu), with conditions like fibromyalgia affecting 160 million (moregooddays.com) and endometriosis impacting 190 million women and girls (who.int).
In mental health, over 700,000 people die by suicide annually (iasp.info), often after silent struggles that went unnoticed.
Each year, over 270,000 women and girls are reported missing in the United States. Black women and girls make up 34% of those cases while comprising only 13% of the population (american.edu). Among Indigenous communities, 5,487 cases were reported in 2022 (humanrightsresearch.org), though many likely go unrecorded.
A Society Distracted
And yet, our attention is often elsewhere. Social media is flooded with influencers boasting the latest beauty trends, weight loss fads, or cosmetic enhancements, while the real crises — systemic violence, environmental destruction, the suffering of billions of sentient beings — fade into the background.
We've become so engrossed in digital distraction that we’ve lost touch with ourselves, our bodies, our capacity to truly feel. Many of us cannot imagine a day without electronics. We cannot sit with silence. We cannot sit with ourselves. And so, the suffering around us — human or non-human — goes unseen.
Reflection
The suffering of non-human animals is not separate from our own. It is magnified by our disconnection. While humans endure invisible pain, animals endure horrors unimaginable to most of us, yet our habits, our consumption, and our apathy perpetuate it.
What does it say about us that we can empathize with some suffering while ignoring others? How can we claim moral high ground when billions suffer out of sight, and yet we celebrate distraction and superficiality?
The pain is all around us — in the silent cries of those enduring chronic pain, in the invisible struggles of a colleague, and in the billions of voiceless animals who are trapped, tortured, and killed each year. We can continue to ignore their suffering, or we can choose to bear witness to it — and let the weight of that suffering change us.
— Ashley
