Pain, that forbidden subject: not to be talked about, never to be mentioned. The reason we cannot talk about it is because our minds utterly repudiate it. We renounce it. We reject and dismiss it. It’s as if even mentioning it, briefly or in passing, can somehow cause it to occur. So we put it out of our minds. We deny its existence. We do not permit a single conscious thought ever to reflect upon it—a protective mechanism some psychologists might call “primal repression.” But we know it’s there, always, just outside our awareness. We know that at any time it can make itself known to us, suddenly and without warning, and in the worst way. Then what? What do we do when it arrives? Well, we use every means available to stop it in its tracks: medication, therapy, surgery. Vast sums are spent every year, every hour, in our never ending war on pain.
It seems clear that pain puts us in a primary state, wiping out the irrelevant and inessential. The petty tribulations of life and living, the day-to-day annoyances and vexations, quickly recede to the background. There’s now something of greater urgency. Pain presents the most elemental challenge to us, forcing us to survive in a way never before experienced. We take our survival for granted until pain shows us we cannot. Our survival, we learn, is actually something uncertain, precarious. We come to recognize that we can receive a mortal threat to our very being, and that we can be forced in response to take urgent measures. So too does pain test our will to live. It would seem a simple fact of life that every person will always choose to live. But pain puts this in doubt. Whether to continue living in pain actually becomes a serious question—one that must be repeatedly asked, and with no easy answer. Further, pain reveals our inner strength. In the face of pain, we draw upon a previously untapped wellspring of strength and determination to become pain free. This wellspring is actually far deeper than can be imagined; in fact, it’s limitless.
After we have endured pain, pain ultimately shares with us its secret, giving up its wisdom. Simply stated, we’re not the same afterward. Call it understanding or clear-sightedness, insight or sagacity—it’s the state of mind of those who have persisted, who have endured. Having withstood the worst of what pain has offered, we can now view any new challenge with a heightened sense of resilience and perspective.
There’s a natural reason why this should be so. For healing is both restorative and regenerative—engendering a return to normalcy as well as fostering both regrowth and rebirth. Indeed, in at least one sense, one’s life can be defined by its surpassing moments: those where one has grown stronger after having suffered some degree of hurt and harm. This is why one’s years cannot be lived cautiously, in the avoidance of pain. They must be lived as if pain did not exist. We thus come to terms with a paradox. We disavow pain while at the same time we intentionally face it, knowing that at any time it can occur. This state of affairs—volatile, uncertain—should not be surprising since the most basic reality of pain is that it originates from, and is an inherent aspect of, that which is most unpredictable—life itself.
