Understanding Pain

 MONTHLY SPECIAL!!!!

Suffering is often seen as a consequence of ill actions, but in reality it is the simplest symptomatic proof of life. It’s the evidence that one is alive—and just as significant to the sustainability of the human ecosystem as all other forms of growth, because suffering in itself is a form of growth. 

The human soul and mind are conformed to develop through moments of joy and suffering. Perhaps not intellectual growth, or of any terrestrial form, but the type that borne self-realization and acceptance. If one is attentive, it can be easily realized that it is at this point we find our truest selves, our deepest ideas, and our inevitable truths. 

All living things suffer; it’s a cancerous side effect of being alive we can’t but do without. The only difference is based on what we define as suffering. And because we see different things through different lenses and in differing lights, we assume some do and others don’t—suffer, that is. But this isn’t true. Suffering is measured by pain. It’s the subtle S.I unit with which we can tell if a person is a victim of this misfortune or not; and so therefore as long as all humans feel pain, all humans suffer. However, to what extent? To understand this better, one must first understand the very concept of pain.

It is said that pain demands to be felt. But that’s the thing: it leaves you no choice. You can’t choose to feel pain or not. You can’t decide to take a break and dictate when to let it in and when not to. With time, what you learn to understand if you pay close attention is that you can only simply accept that there’s really nothing you can do about it. That no one is immune to pain. We can only try to run from it as much as we can but one way or the other we always find a way back to it.

There’s no weakness in accepting this truth. Because truth in itself does no damage, regardless of what the optics portray, it frees. And realizing that you were not powerless in your most vulnerable state can be liberating. You were simply in your most natural state. Human. An entity that is bound to carry some degree of pain in a lifetime. An entity whose heart breaks without breaking, literally, because it was created with anticipation for such an experience.

However, the real question is, can we really live free of pain? Of suffering? I have lived three decades and a few extra years and I know the answer is a solid no. Even a completely detached human being can’t be zeroed entirely from pain—and by extension suffering, how much more wildly emotional ones like us? As long as there is a feeling, of happiness or indifference, pain can never cease to be. There must be opposites of everything for life to find its balance. As well as meaning. For anything, there must be an equal opposite to establish essence. Hence, for every time you feel an ounce of joy, an ounce of pain awaits you from the same source.

Take a child for example. Its birth brings joy; its death brings pain. In the same vein, its healthy state brings joy and its sickly days bring pain. In other words, everything that stands as an emblem of your greatest moments can in a blink of an eye become an emblem of your deepest grief. This is the reality of suffering. Losing what one never hoped to lose, or never receiving what one always hoped to have received. They are two sides of a coin, and more often than not a person gets a toss of the coin carried out at some point in this earthly life.

There is pain in everything, everywhere. In thoughts and actions. In silence and sound. No one has a monopoly of it, and no pain is greater than the other. Rather, it’s subjective. The failure of a simple job application can be just as damaging as the loss of a child. What really matters is the state of mind in which it finds you, and how much of your soul it has the power to consume at that moment.

There is a pain that comes from the cessation of breath and another that is borne from the mere cessation of hope, but both have a degree of loss that can never be recovered once gone riding as its principal horseman.

An unrewarded effort has its own portion of pain just as grave as anything else imaginable. 

Do you know how it feels to constantly try and still constantly fail? You might suppose such a pain to be inferior to death, but it isn’t. Just the sheer thought of how no one would ever know the extent of the effort put in especially when there was no desirable result is a torment on its own. A suffering that is often passed off as a tantrum. But again sit isn’t. The thought that you would always be classified alongside those who never tried all because nothing extraordinarily significant came from your innumerable trials peels a layer of self-esteem from off you each time it lingers. All because posterity judges mainly results, and not efforts. So the suffering remains excruciatingly extant, though silent.

The world is full of pain. Pain that feels different every time. The blind can’t tell the pain of the deaf, nor the deaf of the sick. But pain is pain. It’s a dangerous path to tread alone or to leave untouched. So the next time you see that fellow writhing in pain, remember that what he or she feels can’t be quantified but with the right dose of care it might be repealed. To some extent. And at the end that’s all that matters; that’s all the good you can possibly do. To ease it, even if not away, at least to a point where the soul can catch just a little light.

More so, I would implore you to know once and for all that there’s no such thing as a weaker person because we are all assessed differently. We face different temptations. Some lesser, some more. But the point is that we all face something regardless of degree. Which means none of us is spared. None of us is totally free from suffering. More or less, we are passengers in a crashing vessel. Nevertheless, it’s not a hopeless situation. That’s not the essence of this piece—to tell you that there’s nothing we can do about it. We can, though not to entirely change it because we can’t, but to make the best of it. A man born is of a few days and yet walks into a bundle of troubles as the Book of Job says. So there can be no cessation of pain; however, we can give our lives meaning in spite of it. 

Pain just like any other unquantifiable emotion helps to mark a moment in our lives; and each moment in life embodies what shall eventually be the summary of our lifetime here on earth. Thus, don’t give all of your life to fight pain and suffering, as many do with drugs or callous living to give their euphoric times a greater advantage as against their depressive moments; instead learn to cherish its source or potential sources. 

I’ll explain. 

The reason why it flows with ease from such a source is because the same source holds something of utmost importance and value to you. A marriage, a child, a job, a dream, a hope, an experience. These are the objects that truly matter. These are where you must focus your energy on. Cherish it, make the most of it. Enjoy it. Define your life fully by it before its extreme opposite awakens. This is life. There is no trouble-free life, but you can have one with less troubles, and that is dependent on how much you give yourself to peace, and peace comes from the content of the soul. 

Peace, I like to say, isn’t the absence of suffering. No! It is the knowledge that a life isn’t entirely defined by suffering but by how one defines that moment of suffering. So therefore, the soul finds peace by prioritizing which holds greater value and consequence—suffering or joy, not the absence of either. That’s why I’d advise you to fill your soul with so much of the initial joys you get from these sources such that even at the entrance of pain only a fraction can be scratched off. Because if you don’t, what was the essence of it all?

But then again, am I—who has written this long body of work—at peace? I’m a work in progress. We all are. We’ve all had our moments. Yet the good part about being a work in progress is that it’s not over. It never is, no matter the state you may find yourself. There’s always a worse or better version ahead, and for your sake I hope yours is the better.