Emotions are pain. Unamuno, Life 7.11

Like a Buddhist, Unamuno locates the origin of the self in pain, which is the fundamental feeling, the root of everything we possess that can properly be called awareness. Pain shows us our limits, which inevitably draw us to contrast what we observe, our knowledge, with what we can do, our capability for action. The discrepancy between our capacity for action and our knowledge of what might be done, what might need doing, causes pain that becomes compassion, as we feel our own misery at being incapable of living forever, and forever well, and intuit that other living beings feel this, too.

El dolor es el camino de la conciencia y es por él como los seres vivos llegan a tener conciencia de sí. Porque tener conciencia de sí mismo, tener personalidad, es saberse y sentirse distinto de los demás seres, y a sentir esta distinción sólo se llega por el choque, por el dolor más o menos grande, por la sensación del propio límite. La conciencia de sí mismo no es sino la conciencia de la propia limitación. Me siento yo mismo al sentirme que no soy los demás; saber y sentir hasta donde soy, es saber donde acabo de ser, desde donde no soy.

¿Y cómo saber que se existe no sufriendo poco o mucho? ¿Cómo volver sobre sí, lograr conciencia refleja, no siendo por el dolor? Cuando se goza olvídase uno de sí mismo, de que existe, pasa a otro, a lo ajeno, se en-ajena. Y sólo se ensimisma, se vuelve a sí mismo, a ser él en el dolor. Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice nella miseria, hace decir el Dante a Francesca de Rimini (Inferno V, 121-123); pero si no hay dolor más grande que el de acordarse del tiempo feliz en la desgracia, no hay placer, en cambio, en acordarse de la desgracia en el tiempo de la prosperidad.

«El más acerbo dolor entre los hombres es el de aspirar mucho y no poder nada (πολλὰ φρονέοντα μηδενὸς κρατέειν)», como según Heródoto (lib. IX, cap. 16), dijo un persa a un tebano en un banquete. Y así es. Podemos abarcarlo todo o casi todo con el conocimiento y el deseo, nada o casi nada con la voluntad. Y no es la felicidad contemplación, ¡no!, si esa contemplación significa impotencia. Y de este choque entre nuestro conocer y nuestro poder surge la compasión.

Pain is the road that consciousness walks, and it is by traversing it that living beings become aware of the personal consciousness that is uniquely theirs. Having an awareness of yourself, having personality, is knowing and feeling yourself as something distinct from other beings. We only come to this sensation by crisis or catastrophe, a pain more or less great that causes us to feel our own limits. Consciousness in itself is essentially an awareness of limitation, which we own once it is revealed. I become aware of myself when I feel the fact that I am not other people. Knowing and feeling the position I hold is necessarily knowing where I cease to exist, the limit beyond which I am not.

How are we to know that we exist, if we do not suffer, at least a little? How can we contemplate or consider our own experience, obtaining awareness that watches itself, if not by pain? In moments of delight one forgets the self, losing track of its existence, and passes over to the other, which is foreign and strange: delight estranges us from ourselves. Pain is the only thing that brings us back to the self, which recognizes itself by suffering. “No greater pain than midst woe to remember joy again,” as Dante has Francesca de Rimini say (Inferno 5.121-3). But though there is no pain greater than recalling happy moments from a position of misery, we do not find pleasure in prosperity by recalling our wretchedness (†).

“The bitterest pain that's known to man is having no power and many plans”(‡)—as Herodotus has a Persian tell a Theban during a banquet. And so it is. We can handle everything, or almost everything, with knowledge and desire, but will gives us almost nothing. Contemplation is not happiness when it rises from impotence. Far from it! The shock that happens when our knowledge and our power collide gives rise, in us, to compassion.

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(†) This is contestable, as thoughtful observers have noted that we can & do pause in good times to take pleasure from memories of suffering. As Vergil makes Aeneas say to his comrades after storms drive their ships to the African coast (Aeneid 1.200-3):

Vos et Scyllaeam rabiem penitusque sonantis

accestis scopulos, vos et Cyclopea saxa

experti: revocate animos, maestumque timorem

mittite: forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.

Past Scylla's wrath and roaring crags,

Past Cyclop's rocks you've dared your way.

Summon courage! Banish fear!

Take the trials this day draws near.

With any luck in times to come

We'll look with joy on sufferings done.

Francesca de Remini, you may recall, is the famous medieval adulteress whose affair with Paolo Malatesta (the Beautiful, il Bello) came to a bloody end when his brother Giovanni (the Lame, lo Sciancato) killed them.

(‡) ἐχθίστη δὲ ὀδύνη ἐστὶ τῶν ἐν ἀνθρώποισι αὕτη, πολλὰ φρονέοντα μηδενὸς κρατέειν. Herodotus gives this line to the anonymous Persian who prophesies defeat for Mardonius' army at the battle of Plataea, telling the Theban Thersander that no commander will call off the struggle (Histories 9.16).