So, this whole story begins with him getting into an unexpected traffic accident. A thirty-five-year-old single dad raising a five-year-old child on his own, he had left the child at home for a moment one ordinary evening to run a quick errand, when another car rear-ended him. ("My goodness, how fortunate that the child wasn't in that car!" I reacted almost instinctively, and he nodded as if in genuine agreement. And so, we agreed that even in such an unwelcome situation as a car accident, there is still something to be grateful for.)
He said that, although he wasn't certain, he thought he might have smelled alcohol on the driver who caused the accident. Having never experienced a situation like this before and being quite flustered by the chaos that struck without warning, he hired a personal injury attorney as an urgent first step, and then while looking for a way to care for his wrecked body, he happened to find me.
One of the main reasons I became determined to put his story into writing was that he was perhaps the person I had ever met who made the greatest effort to live consciously. In fact, even before meeting him in person, when we exchanged several messages to help me properly understand the accident and the symptoms, he already seemed a little different. For instance, he would carefully structure even an ordinary text message with separate paragraphs and a proper closing, as though it were a formal letter. The words he chose and the sentences he wrote also had an unusual sense of seriousness about them.
At first, I had simply thought of him as nothing but a polite and well-mannered person. But when he actually appeared before me, sporting a thick beard that reached down to his solar plexus, much like the Amish, despite his relatively young age, I could immediately tell that this character was far more interesting than I had initially sensed. And so, my hyperfocus mode was once again quickly activated, ahead of my own conscious will.
He introduced himself as an Irish-born immigrant who had moved to the United States as a teenager. His family, including his parents and ancestors, had lived for generations in a remote countryside, making their living through livestock farming and agriculture. But ever since he was a child, he had particularly hated that monotonous way of life, so much so that he chose America as if fleeing from it. The ironic part is that, now in his mid-thirties, with his own little child, he could no longer stand city life and was longing to return to the simple life in nature he had once abandoned, to the old way of living his ancestors had maintained.
Perhaps owing to his serious nature, he seemed to make an effort to keep himself reserved and maintain a certain composure until our conversation had progressed to some extent. However, even without the young adult expressing it in words, the agonizing turmoil, inner conflict, and overwhelming stream of thoughts boiling inside his overheated mind were so intense that I could practically hear the friction. 'Well, that's just what being thirty-five is like.' Quietly suppressing the smile that was about to come over me, I cautiously asked him a few questions to get a clearer sense of what heavy burdens this serious young man was carrying and why he had to be so serious.
How would people feel when they encounter a strange massage therapist who, before beginning a session, spends half an hour, sometimes an entire hour, or even longer if necessary, engaging them in an intensive conversation, sometimes even asking pointed questions to get to the bottom of things such as childhood trauma or the underlying causes of the problems they are currently experiencing? I know well that my main duty is to work with the body and that the main purpose of our sessions falls within that scope, and I am no longer unaware by now that this kind of holistic, integrative approach does not work for everyone. Nevertheless, for me, exchanging enough questions and answers (that outwardly seem to have nothing to do with massage at all) so as to accurately understand a person's roots and essential nature is an indispensable part of completing a session.
Even if I cannot yet fully explain the exact relationship between the two and am still in the process of gradually exploring it, unless I first understand a person's soul (although temporary, short-term effects can still be produced without that understanding), the process of connecting with someone on a deeper level and setting things right from the root has never worked particularly well. Conversely, once I come to understand someone fully, the time we spend together, even if it is nothing more than a massage session, can sometimes generate a healing power far deeper, broader, and more radical than either of us had expected.
In that context, we also spent a considerable amount of time engaged in a deep conversation, and it actually did not take long to recognize, by putting together the various clues I had picked up along the way, that he was someone with highly sensitive tendencies. He had never once called himself such, but when I asked, "If we piece together the puzzle so far, it seems you are a highly sensitive person. Do you think so too?", only then did he wear a smile for the first time and show a countenance that seemed to open the door of his heart to our meeting, or to this conversation.
From what I gathered, his five senses, along with senses beyond those, were far more acute than those of other people, and this seemed to make his life burdensome in many ways. Yet, being gentle by nature, he could neither let that inner turmoil spill out nor express it outwardly, instead quietly absorbing it all within himself, deeper and deeper. His desire to flee the city and avoid people, as well as his remarkably deep interest in living a conscious life and the intense efforts he made to govern his inner self, all seemed directly tied to his struggles as a highly sensitive person.
Furthermore, even setting aside his extremely sensitive temperament, his circumstances as a young father bearing the responsibilities of a family, who had yet to establish a clear direction for his own life and livelihood, were making his already troubled inner world doubly and triply turbulent.
Amid all this, the one outlet he had barely managed to find was none other than “exercise.” At one point in our conversation, when I asked him, “Aside from your children or family, what is the most precious and meaningful thing in your life right now?” he answered “exercise” without the slightest hesitation. And when we reached that point, I instinctively thought, 'Ah, this is it!' and felt as though I had found a clue.
In other words, he had been clinging to exercise in an effort to tone down his highly sensitive tendencies and make himself a little more even-tempered, thereby making life a little more bearable. But at some point, that virtuous cycle seemed to have turned into an addiction, going beyond mere obsession or compulsion. He was not entirely unaware of this himself. Long before the accident occurred, he had already begun to feel that his body was gradually starting to creak and wear down one part at a time, or was becoming excessively depleted. Paradoxically, however, the more his anxiety grew, the more deeply he immersed himself in exercise in an attempt to suppress it, falling into a vicious cycle. 'That loop needs to be broken. Only then might he be able to pull through.' It was the moment I discovered the first direction in which I could help him as a massage therapist.
As we continued talking in that way, I came to understand even more clearly why he pursued a conscious way of living and struggled for inner peace so enthusiastically by reading, studying, and experimenting with all sorts of things. This is one of those pieces of practical wisdom in dealing with people and relationships that life taught me at some point: if someone is particularly attached to things like studying the mind or meditation, actively pursues such a way of life, and lives as if they were an exemplary model in that field, it could mean that they are that much more emotionally stable, but conversely, that very person could also be someone who harbors an inner hell that rages more fiercely than anyone else's. Because there are bound to be cases where one cannot bear to go on without going to such lengths to bring one's inner self under control, and that very desperation becomes one's passion and perseverance.
It will take further exploration to understand exactly what made him a highly sensitive person, but when he describes how the world sounds, looks, and feels to someone with such traits, I felt that it was not all that different from the way artists respond to the outside world when they are in an especially sensitive state. Since I was not entirely unfamiliar with the struggles of the latter, I was able to understand the suffering he carried relatively faithfully and without much distortion, albeit in my own way. Nor was it all that difficult to notice that this young man, who seemed strikingly calm and mature at a glance, was actually closer to someone whose inner lava was boiling rather than someone whose inner self was truly stable. This, too, was not so much because my eye for people was particularly sharp, but rather because I, too, had lived with that very same flame burning within me.
'So this young man might be the type who carries far more energy than others. The way a highly sensitive person connects with the countless layers of the world, the endless messages exchanged through that connection, and the anxiety and anger accumulated inside him. All these are, in the end, simply different forms of energy. Perhaps my task is to open another window for him besides exercise so he can release that energy in a healthy way, and to explore together what that window could be. As once another breathing hole opens up, the inner anger would naturally quiet down.'
As I faced this young adult before me, who so closely resembled a younger version of myself, almost as if I were gazing into that mirror from Harry Potter that reveals the time in life one yearns to return to most, this was the second moment in which I sensed a clue as to how I might possibly help him.
In this way, without realizing it, our conversation had easily stretched well past an hour, and I had to pour an equally intense level of energy into the physical session, working directly on a body that had been battered by the accident. In the end, it took about five hours from the moment I greeted him as he entered my office to the time I saw him off as he left, and the lingering presence left behind after his departure was, how should I put it, so vivid in its residual heat, like a stage right after a powerful performance, that it made me shudder.
"Let me venture this thought cautiously, but after talking with you this far, I have a strong feeling that this car accident may have been less a matter of mere bad luck and more, how should I put it, something closer to an inevitable event that was somehow meant to happen. I am not trying to interpret our ordinary everyday lives in an overly religious or spiritual way, but nonetheless, if I may share what I feel, I think this accident had to happen in order to bring you, who had fallen into a vicious cycle, to a halt (because the accident had in fact more or less forced you to stop exercising), and to make you aware of the things you had been overlooking all this time. In a way, it was almost as if it had happened intentionally. What do you think?”
Knowing that saying something like this to someone who had experienced an unexpected accident could be offensive, I was particularly cautious. Yet, as I reflected on the various clues we had exchanged through our conversation, I felt a strong intuition, almost amounting to a conviction, that there was definitely something more than mere coincidence underlying what had happened to him. And, fortunately, he immediately grasped what I was trying to say and gave a slow, firm nod, as if in agreement, as though he, too, had unconsciously felt the same way all along.
I felt that simply reaching that point of mutual understanding and being able to agree on it was enough for this meeting to have achieved its most important purpose. This is because once we understand the real reason why something happened, making peace and establishing a healthy relationship with it usually follow as a natural next step.
And although I had not yet shared this thought with the young man, there was one more personal reason why this session felt particularly special and made me resolve to preserve it in writing. As I waged my own earnest battle, rolling up my sleeves and pant legs without hesitation, doing whatever I could to pull someone who resembled me in so many ways even a little out of the mud, a certain realization flashed through a corner of my mind like a shooting star, swift but leaving behind a distinct afterimage. Insights are usually much faster than understanding or explanation, which makes them difficult to put into words precisely, and that flash of illumination that awakened me and passed by in that moment was no different.
That fleeting realization was, so to speak, an answer as to why God created highly sensitive people. Why does God subject certain good natured people to such particular suffering? Why does He simply stand by and watch without offering help to someone trapped in endless hardships? Watching this young man whose heart had been burnt black with angst, or rather, watching myself in a past chapter of my own life, my subconscious could not help but harbor such resentment.
And though I do not know quite how it came to pass, in an instant, with that quiet understanding taking hold, 'Ah, so he is now receiving a very special lesson in suffering.' there came a moment when so many things simply became clear. Just as when the hard-to-explain understanding that 'This accident did not happen by mere chance' flashed through my mind.
And so, though such words could hardly resonate with someone currently struggling and thrashing in the mud of trial and hardship, anyone who has already passed through such a time of suffering at least once in their life knows this: human beings can never truly understand any kind of suffering without having experienced it themselves first. And we can deepen our understanding of ourselves, others, and humanity only to the extent that we ourselves have suffered.
'So this young man, born with the special disposition of a highly sensitive person and struggling through life many times more than others, is not receiving a harsh punishment so much as taking a very special kind of lesson.' That interpretation dissolved the long held resentment resting in my heart, like a kind of salvation.
Even if that bleak darkness seems as though it will go on forever now, every hardship is bound to come to an end. (This, too, is a fact known to anyone who has lived through such times.) And when that time comes, the protagonist of that story will find themselves having grown into a completely different person before they even realize it. And they will come to understand that this is neither a mere play on words nor an exercise in self-delusion, but a precious truth of life that can only be attained by reaching that point through one's own efforts.
Having belatedly come to understand God's intentions in this way, I hurriedly withdrew my still-immature resentment, and once again, we exchanged an embarrassed, knowing smile that went unnoticed by everyone else.
And in that same light, I couldn’t help but wonder if this young man, too, might ultimately be destined to care for and heal the pain of others. For the fact that few have suffered as much as he has means that few could understand suffering quite as well.
Since there are so many different ways of healing in the world, I could not yet know exactly what his instrument might be, but perhaps fanning the flames and clearing a path by discovering within him the clues of talent and passion in that direction, thereby opening a window to sublimate the many energies pent up inside him, could be the most meaningful help I might offer under this connection. With that diagnosis of my own, I quietly and cautiously brought our first session to a close.
How could I possibly convey this in a way that would reach the soul of such a delicate and sensitive young man most effectively? Until I see him again before long, finding the right approach and coming up with a way to do so would be the task before me. But since it felt much like the act of writing, it was challenging, to be sure, yet not something beyond my ability. In this way, even as I absorbed myself in figuring out how to save someone by using every resource within my power, I was well aware that this was not so much saving that person as ultimately saving myself, so it did not tire me in the least and, if anything, left me feeling thoroughly exhilarated.
© Text & Photos by Tao Jung