On Pain
Today I read my usual weekly numerology column and it advises me to let myself feel.
But right now I am too busy to feel much. I am so numbed out by busyness that often the only thing that reminds me I'm alive is that dull low sensation of emotional pain. It's very mild, caused by no one and nothing but my current constraints. I don't notice it except during very quiet moments like today when my class was doing a test and I was staring out a window across a sunlight dappled courtyard at a girl walking across the grass.
But when I do notice it, I remember that I'm not happy. I'm not satisfied with my life as it is now. But it's okay. It's just pain. I think pain is being alive. We were made to feel pain. I'm not talking about the kind of pain that overrides everything else, but small pains, like ulcers, cuts, bruises, insect bites, allergies. Why should such small things hurt? Why don't we have thicker hides? And similarly, why should the sensitivities of everyday life hurt in that aching, throbbing way? And would you feel alive without your everyday heartbreak?
And if we feel pain, that's allowing ourselves to feel right? Not in an overindulgent, angsty type of way but just in accepting the presence of our dark passenger (as Dexter would say).
I'm not saying that pain is good. I'm saying is that pain is living.
But right now I am too busy to feel much. I am so numbed out by busyness that often the only thing that reminds me I'm alive is that dull low sensation of emotional pain. It's very mild, caused by no one and nothing but my current constraints. I don't notice it except during very quiet moments like today when my class was doing a test and I was staring out a window across a sunlight dappled courtyard at a girl walking across the grass.
But when I do notice it, I remember that I'm not happy. I'm not satisfied with my life as it is now. But it's okay. It's just pain. I think pain is being alive. We were made to feel pain. I'm not talking about the kind of pain that overrides everything else, but small pains, like ulcers, cuts, bruises, insect bites, allergies. Why should such small things hurt? Why don't we have thicker hides? And similarly, why should the sensitivities of everyday life hurt in that aching, throbbing way? And would you feel alive without your everyday heartbreak?
And if we feel pain, that's allowing ourselves to feel right? Not in an overindulgent, angsty type of way but just in accepting the presence of our dark passenger (as Dexter would say).
I'm not saying that pain is good. I'm saying is that pain is living.