How should we relate with Pain?

Pain! Pain! Pain!! A word many of us run away from but a phenomenon that is as constant in our lives as life itself. Pain. How we avoid it! How we try to prevent it from coming; but it always comes!  When it arrives, it tears our bodies apart. It disturbs our equilibrium; it upsets our center of gravity. We feel awful; we feel helpless; we are in pain!

We want it to go away; some of us try to drown it with our tears, while others try to dull it with something strong. Something that can make them forget, to make them numb out the pain. I have learnt however that pain will take its course, whatever you do. It will spend its time, and pass on. Whether we do something about it or not, it will go away after a while. What will remain is a mere memory of the pain, not even that, but a mere memory of the emotion that we felt while the pain was with us.

Physical pain is one thing, and perhaps it is easier to deal with it. You can use something for it, or against it. Not wanted, or prayed for, but it is on the surface or just beneath the surface, and usually something can reach it, to soothe it, or to make it stop, even for a while. Emotional pain on the other is hidden deeper, and goes further down to the very depth of our being. Almost nothing can reach it; nothing can help it go away quickly. It is there, for as long as it likes or as long as it is allowed to be there. As with physical pains however, no matter how long it stays, it will ultimately also go away.

I have always wondered about pain! Are they altogether bad? Should they be altogether avoided? The pain of childbirth has never stopped a woman from wanting to give birth to another child, neither has it stopped women from wanting to have children. I was at my wife’s first labour, for our daughter, and I was thoroughly horrified at the amount of pain she went through. Once the baby came out however, and she held her, it was as if she never went through any pain! I, on the other hand could not get over it for a much longer time.. Funny!

What about the pain of love gone sour? No one wants to suffer a broken heart. We want love to come and stay forever, but it rarely does. Should we then try not to fall in love so we don’t ever have to suffer the pain of falling out of love? Or is the joy of finding love always a more compelling reason why we often leave our heart on the table time and again, with the possibility that it can be hurt? I look back at my life and that of some of the people around me, and I know that for the people I have loved, I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to love them. I ask myself if I really fell out of love with them. Not sure what the answer is, but perhaps we wanted different things at different times, or perhaps, loving someone does not mean you end up spending the rest of your lives with them.

The subject of pain is vast, so I will limit my rambling to the emotional side of pain. When we lose someone close, it often feels as if our lives are over. Our world stops, or is destroyed, or so we think. However, no matter how long it takes, the intensity of that pain eventually begins to recede, and after a while, only the memory of that pain remains.

So I ask, how should we deal with pain, or maybe the question should be how do we deal with the aftermath of pain? I think we need to remember the pain, but beyond that, we also need to remember more the memories of the person or the relationship before the onset of the event that caused us pain. If I have loved someone and then we had to break up, I think I would rather be thankful for the opportunity to have been able to love them, to spend that time of my life with them, and to remember those memories. That ultimately helps me to not hate them. It also helps me to build more positively on the aftermath of dealing with the pain.

Many of us don’t understand that pain helps us to be stronger. To be broken means that we can be healed. We are better when we have fallen and are now back on our feet. We learn, we experience, that is living! Pain helps us in a lot of ways. It helps us to cherish both the old relationship and even the new one better. It helps us to understand what can go wrong and prevent it. It helps us to not hold on to the things that can ultimately cause us pain. It helps us to get a right perspective to live. I say pain helps us more than it hurts us.

When loved ones are sick and ultimately pass away, we are bitter, broken and sad. We ask why? We are angry. Did we not pray? Did we not hope? Why did God allow him/her to die? Well, I am not God, and I can’t answer the question, but because I have also been there, I have found that God sees pain differently than we do. To Him, pain sometimes is a necessity for a purpose to be served. He had to cause himself and his son pain to save the world itself. He sometimes gives up his people to go through pain to achieve something that is greater and more important than them. If he gave up His only son, then He can give up any of us, the children he afterwards begat.

The process of healing from pain is a process of learning, and of appreciation.

Life is a continuum, at least till it is over. Events begin and end, Individuals come on to the scene at one point and drop away at another point in time. The start may be an event outside of our making, but the end should be envisaged and planned for if possible. There is no such thing as a painless death, all death is painful, to the dead and the living. Also, no relationship is meaningless. If and when it is over, it means it has served its purpose, so we should learn to let go of it, along with the pain and hurt it may have caused.

We should not only learn to let go of it, we should also please learn from the pain. Remember the memories of the good times in that relationship or friendship. Heal yourself or allow yourself to heal, and open your heart once more to loving, and maybe it will be to the same person again. Now, trust me, that is absolutely possible, if we don’t allow the pain to kill the sweet memories. And if not the old person, someone else is already on his/her way to love you again, and hopefully make your heart cry, with joy or in pain!

Did I make any sense to you? Lol. I hope so!