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The Two Burdens of Being Seen
What is the real burden of chronic illness?
On June 9th in “The Ethicist” column of The New York Times Magazine, a letter writer asks if it’s unethical to not date someone because he has a chronic illness. The most problematic line in the columnist’s response was, “You don’t owe it to anyone to accept that burden.” The columnist, Kwame Anthony Appiah, qualified and added to his response on June 12th after feedback from the chronic illness community.
Don’t get me wrong: chronic illness is a burden. But the way that burden was framed in “The Ethicist” was too one-dimensional and ignorant of what that burden includes — and makes it especially painful.
The shared burden
In his response, I can appreciate that Appiah was making “a distinction between what an early acquaintance required of us and what a serious relationship did” when it comes to putting care-giving responsibilities into context. It is true that chronic illness doesn’t affect us in a vacuum: our loved ones share in the experience. They have to live with chronic illness by bearing witness to what it does to the person they love. And they must learn what their loved one’s condition requires and how they can offer meaningful support.
But my problem with Appiah’s original treatment of the letter writer’s question — and this…
