In Hemingway’s short story, Indian Camp, a doctor takes his son along to witness him perform a difficult emergency labor. During the labor his son asks, “Oh, Daddy, can’t you give her something to make her stop screaming?” The father’s reply is one of my favorite sentences in the English language.

“No. I haven’t any anaesthetic,” his father said. “But her screams are not important. I don’t hear them because they are not important.”

This is one of my favorite lines in all of literature. Most literature is primarily about dramatizing human pain; in Hemingway, there’s almost a coldness, a lack of focus on pain. He doesn’t need pain for the narrative. His focus is external, not the internal. We all take our pain much too seriously. In truth, our pain almost never matters: what matters is holding a healthy baby in our arms.