" The realisation,’ he said. He spoke no more loudly than before, but the words seemed to rise from his core. ‘That I have come to is this, that in our well-intentioned desire to describe and label the psychological wounds of the survivors of war and conflict and terror, we have failed to examine the psychological wounds of those who face the void without ever knowing the reality of life, of the creeping numbness that the fear of suffering, the terror of pain has created. We, professionals and lay folk alike, have used the suffering of others to reinforce the myth of ourselves: their unhappiness becomes the bolster to our happiness. We are terrified of their pain, simultaneously attracted to it and repelled by it. We want to be assured that all pain is treatable, while we comfort ourselves with the belief in the superior quality of our existence for never having encountered trauma, for this to continue we must build psychological fortresses to protect ourselves against the possibility of pain. Now you see that all of the weakness is not in them, those who live through the agony, who survive and transform into something else, but in others too. Here …’ He swept out an arm, to take in the room, the building, the city, and what lay beyond. The whole of it. "

― Aminatta Forna , Happiness