Pain

It hurts.

Mommy, please make it stop. It’s killing me! The thoughts race through his mind. The pain races through his arms, to his shoulders, merges in his back, and surges up into his head. The pulsing and tearing of each movement rips a new hole from his consciousness into a dark world of agony. Life has slowed down where a second is a week and each moment, instead of slipping by at the speed of time becomes an eternity in which to experience the excruciating suffering.

He’s grateful for the thousand beads of sweat running down his face because it hides the tears from the eyes of those watching. Somewhere, music is playing, if you could call it music. It was a jarring, ear-thrashing blend of sound that followed the drumbeats of a slave galley, forcing the rhythm into the souls of the condemned, those already dead but still moving with each doom, doom, doom, doom. It goes on forever. No end.

-Beepbeep –

It ends.

He raises the weighted bar one last time and sets it down on the forked rests. The clock tells him that two minutes have passed. The fire in his arms still rages but the pain is welcome now. The dross of weakness is being scraped off the surface and only steel will remain.

-beepbeepbeep-

He lies back down again, lifts the bar, and descends back into the depths of agony with a smile on his face.

The pain is his friend.

Pain

“Pain, is not the enemy. Pride, self-pity, self-righteousness, the bitterness in your heart, these are the enemy,” – My mother

“Pain is never a bad thing. Your pain, it teaches you a lesson. Your opponent’s pain, well that’s just good,” – Anonymous Wrestling Coach

“Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something,” – Wesley (disguised as the Dread Pirate Roberts) from The Princess Bride.

“Pain is weakness leaving the body,” – USMC


Pain, hurt, agony, ache, suffering, torment, anguish; we have many words for it and most of us know what someone means when they use the word ‘pain’. Many people live their whole lives in pain. Others live their whole lives running from it. Often, people will spend hours, years, or lifetimes, contemplating their pain. But how often do we stop and think about what it is?

Just what is pain?

Most people will say “well, pain is what hurts you.” But what does it mean to be ‘hurt’?

Merriam-Webster online describes it this way:

“a state of physical, emotional, or mental lack of well-being or physical, emotional, or mental uneasiness that ranges from mild discomfort or dull distress to acute often unbearable agony, may be generalized or localized, and is the consequence of being injured or hurt physically or mentally or of some derangement of or lack of equilibrium in the physical or mental functions (as through disease), and that usually produces a reaction of wanting to avoid, escape, or destroy the causative factor and its effects ” http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/pain

We have a couple words that we can draw from this definition:

Well-being (and the lacking of it)

and

Uneasiness

For the purposes of our discussion, I think that ‘well-being’ is the more profitable focus for our attention. Do not misunderstand me. I am not tossing aside information or a point of view simply because I deem it irrelevant. However, when each of us think of pain, I seriously doubt that the word ‘unease’ comes to mind (unless we are classifying fear as form of pain).

Lack of well-being

There are a host of questions that arise from this definition of pain. However, I would like to begin with one that is not readily apparent.

Is pain a bad thing?

Don’t answer right away. Let us ask some other questions but, as we do, hold that question in the back of your mind.

What is well-being (since the lacking of it is pain)? This is a question that delves into your very definition of life and how to live it. The simple answer is a physical one. We can start there and move on to a possible deeper meaning. Well-being, on the simplest level, is your physical health. If you have a cut, there is pain and a lack of full health. If you have the flu, you are in a different sort of pain.

Normally, I don’t do this, but I am going to disagree with the dictionary about this word.

You see, even on a physical level, ‘pain’ and a ‘lack of well-being’ are not the same. What about exercise? If done right, it is painful, but it is good for you. Is it not really pain? According to the dictionary, it is not. What about childbirth? Heralded as one of the most painful experiences of life (and I shall not dispute it) it is not (if all goes well) a detriment to the well-being of the mother. According to the dictionary, it is not pain. I think that you, my readers, will agree when I say that this is a poor definition for pain.

I would say that pain is the feeling associated with friction or hardship. I might even say “pain is the feeling of difficulty”.

Think about it. When you are sick, it is difficult and you feel it. When you cut yourself it’s the same story. When you work-out to the point of agony, it is a painful hardship. When a woman gives birth, it could very well be the hardest and most painful time of their lives. Let’s take it deeper. When your best friend betrays you, it is difficult to deal with and you feel it – deeply. When your long-term girlfriend or boyfriend leaves you, it is difficult to handle and definitely you feel pain in it. When your cousin dies, there is no doubt to either the hardship or pain.

Now, the point of it all: there is a point to it all.

There is a purpose to pain.

Can I prove such a crazy statement or is it simply the wishful thinking of an optimist that says “everything happens for a reason, look at the silver lining”? I shall assure you that I am no optimist by nature. Yet I do think that

Well, then what is the purpose?

Well there is the one that any people assume is the answer for pain: to make you stronger. While I do not think that this is the only reason for pain. I do think it is one of them. In a manner similar to exercising (where the muscles are torn and put back together, stronger) when a person is torn emotionally and put back together, they are stronger.

How are they put back together? By the doctors around us. Many times those are friends or family. Sometimes it is through faith in some great physician to do the healing. I don’t know how you deal with pain. However, as you are put back together, you must be careful. It is easy to become jaded, bitter, or resentful.

I once heard it described this way:

“When you are hurt, it is like being cut with a sharp knife, there may be a deep wound but it is clean and while there might be a scar, it will heal. Yet if you allow bitterness, self-pity, or self-righteousness into that wound it will become infected and become a poison to you. It will not heal and if it ever closes will leave a nasty scar.”

I tend to agree with that description. Pain can make you stronger through the very act of dealing with the pain. Whether you put yourself through it, or whether you are forced into it, you are placed into a position of hardship and your muscles or mind are stretched to the breaking point. The only question is ‘how will you be put back together’?

Yet I think that there is another purpose for pain.

Pain is a message.

Who sent it? I’ll leave that to you to discover. I have an idea but I do not want to spoil your own search for the answer.

Sometimes pain lets you know not to do something again. This is most often physical pain. Fire is HOT and will burn you, so putting your face in it is a bad idea. It can be emotional pain. For example if someone enters into a bad and ill-advised relationship for poor reasons, the resulting pain teaches a lesson. This is NOT to say that all pain in relationships means that they were a bad idea. ALL relationships involve pain, most of that is the kind that makes the members of the relationship (and often the relationship itself) stronger.

Sometimes pain is a way to draw you closer to others. It tells you that you cannot make it on your own. It is very hard (I might say impossible, since I have never seen it done) to heal yourself of hurt. When you have been wounded, either physically or emotionally, you need others around you to care for you and help you to clean and dress the wound. Some small wounds can be dealt with on your own, like a paper cut or an insensitive word from someone close to you that cut worse than they knew. Some can be shrugged off, like a stubbed toe or an insulting comment about your hair. Yet, when the pain is severe enough, it necessitates the invitation of others into our life in order to deal with it. It is a reminder that we were not made to live alone. Some of us are more solitary than others, yet we all need people close to us, in our lives and hearts.

So, is pain a bad thing (remember I asked that question before)? I hold that it is not. While it is not a pleasant feeling I think that pain and pleasure are far more than they seem to be and move simply from desirable and undesirable, or comfortable and uncomfortable, and become opportunities to grow.

Like Wesley said in that wonderful parody The Princess Bride, life is pain. Pain is life. If we go through life expecting no pain or avoiding pain, we avoid life altogether. Yet if we accept it, embrace it, and heal from it, we will grow and be able to look back on our pains as the chiseling of an artist carving out the person you were intended to be rather than the random striking of lightening.

So, how do you view pain? How do you deal with it?