Pain

  Yesterday I saw the face of pain.  

  It was sudden, gripping and relentless.  It arrived so quickly as to take me completely by surprise and unaware.  It was not unbearable pain and was quickly stifled, but for a moment or two, it was there.  It left me wondering why this old pain should cross the face of one so full of joy and life.  And why now?  How did I respond?  In that moment I wished that I could take away the pain so completely and totally as to make it feel as though there had never been any suffering in the first place.  Then, I realized what a selfish desire this was.  Were I to remove the pain of this wonderful woman’s life, I would rob her of the experience the pain had given her which had shaped her into the person there before me. 

“Wisdom is simply pain that has healed.”

    --Anonymous

  I have been reflecting for most of the day on the purpose and benefit of pain.  Why do we experience pain?  Well, pain can be beneficial in some ways.  It can warn of danger or injury, i.e. touching a hot stove, a broken limb, a bruise.  In fact, one of the major things that doctors rely on when treating a patient is the pain scale.  If they know how intense the pain is of a patient and roughly where it is coming from they can begin proper treatment.  

  Pain or suffering in general is also one way of knowing that we’re alive.  I remember when I was a young teen knowing in that split second as I was falling off of a fast moving ATV that the landing was going to hurt.  I also remember the terror when, in that split second after landing, I didn’t feel any pain.  I thought for what seemed like a long time that I was dead.  It couldn’t have lasted longer than the space of one heartbeat before the pain rushed in all at once and I let out a primal scream of sheer agony.  It was so intense that I knew I must still be alive. 

“Pain without love,

Pain, I can’t get enough

Pain, I like it rough

‘Cause I’d rather feel pain than nothing at all.”

  --Three Days Grace

  They say that pain is a side effect of the healing process.  The old adage, “It has to hurt if it is to heal” has been used for millennia.  So, pain shows us that we can heal?  Yes, and not just from physical pain.  The pain of experience can turn someone into a very wise person.  Mental anguish can shape the life of a person, family and even a nation.  The feelings of torment and oppression of many can, in fact, shape the course of the whole world. 

  What about emotional pain?  What is the benefit there? 

  I have heard it said that emotional pain exists to teach us the depth of its opposite.  The more pain you experience the more you understand… what?  The absence of pain?  I don’t think so.  Pain, especially, emotional pain can be so intense you feel like you could die—hope that you would die in the moment it is experienced!  The opposite would have to be more significant to be its equal and opposite.  Pleasure, then?  Is the opposite of pain pleasure? Again, I don’t think so, at least not in the sense of opposing the pain I am talking about.  Pleasure too can be intense, but inadequate to explain the opposite of pain and suffering. 

  “People in pain—especially people we love—test that dimension of us. Their need forces us to decide how much of us we’re really willing to give, how much of our time and emotional and physical resources we will sacrifice for them.”

                        --Sandra Strange

  Personally, I feel that the opposite of pain is joy.  “My soul was filled with joy as exquisite as was my pain.”  Therefore, the deeper our understanding of pain, the deeper is our understanding of joy.  Perhaps the converse is also true that the greater our understanding of joy, the greater our understanding of pain.  

  For my part, it is difficult to see others in pain, both for their sake and for my own.  It brings to memory echos of my own secret pain.  Like the itch that you feel over a long healed scar…  The battle wounds that I have gathered from the car accident, cutting words or the heartbreak of loss… Pain is life. 

            “Life is pain.  But joy may be found from the willful participation therein.”

            --Buddha 

  What about the pain of rejection?  Everyone can relate to this pain on one level or another.  This is the pain of loss tied together with the fear of inadequacy and insecurity all rolled into one.  The human heart is an interesting thing, emotionally speaking.  We can feel something that makes no sense at all for someone and, knowing that it will result in nothing but pain and frustration, throw ourselves willingly into misery simply by exposing our vulnerabilities to each other.  

"Suffer love!  A good epithet! I do suffer love,

indeed, for I love thee against my will!"

  This may, in fact, be the worst kind of pain because there really is no recovery.  They say time heals all wounds and for some this may be true.  Time offers a healing salve over the scars of yesteryear and sooths the pain of memories long past.  The fact of the matter, however, is that the pain is still there; the wound is still there, though it has been covered by layer upon layer of time.  Some pain stands in constant danger of being revived, as though a wound  is reopened.