Pain is perhaps the most beautiful, profound, and yet sorely underrated and misunderstood experience. At the most basic level, it serves effectively as a means to protect and defend us from harmful situations. A grazed knee reminds us to be more careful when running or cycling. A burnt finger teaches us to avoid open fires. The pain of regret from making a bad choice alerts us at a similar juncture to think carefully before deciding. Pain acts as the red flag to steer us away from potentially dangerous situations.
Pain is valuable information but it can become a double edged sword if we give in to our first reactive thoughts without learning to filter through it. While it teaches us to avoid similar situations from the past to prevent ourselves from getting hurt, our judgement of the situation at hand may not always be accurate or complete. Sometimes we interpret a threat wrongly, equate two different situations, or make conclusions with insufficient information., we become more maladaptive than adaptive.
Perhaps you’ve had a harrowing time in your first relationship, but that doesn’t mean the next boy is also a jerk and heartbreaker. Love may take a few break ups intertwined with sleepless nights and swollen eyes to be discovered. Maybe you’ve failed over and over at your tests, but it doesn’t mean that you’ll continue to be as hopeless in the subject. Our deepest dreams will likely need persistence, in spite of failures, regrets and criticism to be realised.
Pain is an inevitable part of life. We will, time and again, find ourselves in situations where we instinctively want to draw back from the memory of a painful experience to avoid the risk of getting hurt. By doing that, though, we’re ultimately depriving ourselves from people, experiences and opportunities that could potentially enrich our lives. When it comes to taking chances, it can pay off to continue being vulnerable and open.
To live life fully, we may sometimes need to embrace pain, or the prospect of pain, without letting it consume us or limit possibilities. In this day and age though, it’s always tempting to choose the easier way out of a painful situation or memory by avoiding it. Drugs, medication, cigarettes, alcohol and sex are the most common ways people resort to to stop or deal with pain. Such destructive acts, however, are not a release from the pain, only a distraction. Suicide, especially, doesn’t end it – it merely lengthens and compounds the pain upon the people around you who love you.
It is the endurance, not escape, of pain that pushes our threshold, reveals depths, and teaches us how strong we can be. If it hurts, it mattered. If it mattered, it’s beautiful and worthwhile. So accept it, embrace it, appreciate it. No matter at which point of our lives, it will be there as the friend who’s extremely difficult to like and be with, but is never afraid to point out the harshest truth and make you cry in order to help you become a wiser, kinder, and stronger being.
