Think And Feel

What is life when you can't much think and feel? When you just breathe and when only involuntary biological functions happen?

How lonely it must be to not be able to think and feel? To barely be able to reach out to others.

To not be able to understand what's happening around you, to not be able to catch on to what's happening in your favorite program you are watching on TV?

What do you look forward to each day? What can you look forward do when you can't think and feel? 

Do we effectively stop living when we cease to think and feel, even if the heart is still breathing? 

Were the rishis living and alive when they did penance and didn't think or feel?

What is being alive?

On a different note, I think there are two types of pain that are expressed (this is my belief).
One is the involuntary pain that cannot be suppressed. The other is the pain that is consciously expressed and is not involuntary. When our ability to think is impaired, we no more consciously and deliberately express that pain, which in other circumstances we might.

A friend raised the question of whether the non-expression of pain is due to the non-recognition of such pain by the brain. 

So the issue was one of non recognition by the brain vis-a-vis absence of conscious of expression of the pain. 

If some expression of pain continues to happen while other usual expression of pain is absent, then is it not likely that the non-expression is more likely due to lack of desire / ability to express pain than to the lack of brain's ability to recognize pain? 

If my belief, about there being two kinds of expressions of pain - one involuntary and one thought out and expressed, is true then I wonder about the utility and reason for the consciously expressed pain.

This conscious expression is a survival technique and it is learned. It serves the purpose of eliciting empathy, hence reducing stress on oneself. People tend to render assistance to the person who has consciously expressed such pain and reduce their expectation of help from the person who has expressed pain. 

"I have suffered so much" is socially seen as synonymous to "I have achieved so much". If one wanted to boost one's achievement one just has to express suffering adequately!

I postulate, hence, that voluntary (as against involuntary) expression of pain is a survival strategy in the social arena.