The Choice of Sacrifice

How do you turn off pain?

Yes, I know how that sounds, but bear with me on this.

It’s a question undercover police officers are asked of themselves whenever they have to enter the dark and dangerous realms of undercover work.

It sounds impossible, doesn’t it?

Well it does to me, but then I’ve never been good at dealing with pain of any kind.

And that whole thing about women having a higher pain threshold than men is, as far as I am concerned, utter bull-crap.

I don’t think we have a higher threshold for pain.

We just know how to combine our many and varied painkillers for the most effective result.

Or maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, the more stories I read about officers who live and work undercover, the more I come to admire their tolerance for pain, and not just the physical pain they might have to endure as part of the role they must play for months, sometimes years on end.

It’s the emotional pain.

Being cut off from the love of family and friends, from the love of husbands and wives and children.  It has to be one of the hardest pains to endure.

So why, one wonders, would someone choose to put themselves through that?

Why would they put themselves in a position where they have to not only cut themselves off from the people who love them, but cut off their emotions for those people to the extent that they would have no reaction towards them if they saw them in the street.

So how do you turn off the pain?

I guess that ability is stronger in some than in others, which is why they are able to do the job.

Some former undercover officers talk about compartmentalising themselves and their feelings, of shutting them away in a box that cannot be opened unless they are back at home.

Then as long as they fully believe in the role that they are playing, whatever that happens to be, they can choose to feel or not to feel however they want.

They can choose to show their emotions to the people who love them, or they can choose to shut them off completely, to become someone else, and to effectively infiltrate whichever group it is that they have been tasked to.

Some of them even spoke of it like being a switch.

In switching between different roles in their lives, they are able to turn their emotions on and off at will.

Which is impressive.

I know a great many people who would pay dearly for the ability to do that.

Who wouldn’t?

When life becomes too painful, all you have to do is turn off the switch to your emotions and you will feel no pain at all.

How incredibly freeing would that be?

No more frustrated anger at annoying people, no more sadness when a loved one leaves you, no more crying over a broken heart.

Because it sucks to be in pain.

Everyone knows this.

When you’re wading through a particularly painful time in your life it can feel like you never want to feel anything ever again, that you would do whatever was asked of you, if only someone would come along and take the pain away.

Sometimes it’s more than we can bear.

And I know it’s the strength of our emotions, good and bad, that makes us who we are, that makes us human.

It just sucks.

And if you’re someone who believes in a reason for everything, it can be the kind of thing that has you questioning the powers that be.

But I’m digressing.

And if you’re sensing that there’s another ‘but’ here, you would be right.

Because no emotions means no emotions.

Of either kind.

No joy at the sight of a loved one coming to greet you at the end of a long hard day, no laughter at a shared joke, no peace at being held in their arms.

 The point, if there is one, is that we are human. 

I don’t envy the undercover officers.

They must be cut off from family and friends, relying purely on themselves to get into the dangerous situation they have been chosen for, living within it for as long as necessary, and then getting themselves safely out again.

Their stories are so full of bravado on the face of it, doing what they have to do in order to complete their assignment.  But underneath I can’t help but see and feel the pain and loneliness they have to go through.

It is their choice, of course, something that they feel they were born to do.

But I’m glad it’s not my profession of choice.

If, indeed, we get to choose what we do at all.

And their choice to do this work is what forces them to make that awful decision between living as an undercover officer and cutting themselves off from the love of their family and friends, or living a normal life.

For all that they achieve in the work they do, I for one am glad that they are doing it.

And that they made the choice of sacrifice.