On Pain, The Literal and Metaphoric and Both
I've had this running thought in my head for over 6 months now, first brought on in a conversation with one of my sons. The gist or summary of that thought was this: "So many of the things we do to or for ourselves are to relieve a pain we can't even name half the time or all kinds of pain we know by name and wish we had a word to summarize it all."
I'm inspired to write a bit about it all today on what would have been the 80th Birthday of someone I knew that carried a lot of pain and, in reflection, was not very good at alleviating it, often for reasons completely beyond his control and very often for reasons he could. I think we're all like that in various degrees. We carry with us these nagging sources of pain that weight on us from emotional scars to literal joints and muscles that suffered damage and never quite healed us back to 100 percent. If we were ever truly 100 percent.
The would have been 80 year-old was my father. I lost him 8 years ago next month at age 72. Younger than he should have gone, sooner than he should have gone, and among the reasons for that is a pain he never could heal. Pain of a difficult childhood, the pain of working very hard and having high aspirations for himself, pain from a wounded ego when his aspirations didn't get the results he wanted, and a pain that just comes from this life being a lot. Because it is a lot, right?
The picture I just painted is terribly misleading, though. I say someone is or was in pain and we think sadness or immobility or what have you. But that wasn't him in the whole. Just a part. Because in all that pain there was happiness and laughter, inside jokes in a family he loved, belly laughs to the point of tears as the funny things his grandsons and granddaughter would do and say. Truly, I think I saw him shed tears more from laughing than I ever did from sorrow. And to this day I think his inability to cry from the latter was part of the problem. As the son who does cry easy and does emote and wears his heart on his sleeve it was often a challenge to relate to someone who couldn't. Or didn't. As if we can frame it so easily as a choice...
Pain, I believe, is at the heart of so many of our ills. It explains everything from addiction to self-abuse to the pain we inflict on others as a temporary fix to addressing our own hurt. Do it often enough and it becomes habitual, second nature. Drink enough, smoke enough, take a pill, buy enough, eat enough, numb enough, just make it go away. Work hard enough it will get better (it might), work hard and it's still not making a difference (that happens, too), keep up, hold back, twist it, turn it, burn it, block it out, whatever it takes. Chin up, don't get discouraged, treat yourself, don't beat yourself up --
SHUT THE FUCK UP.
If you've never had that moment with the internal or external voices telling you how to alleviate, fix, solve, or improve anything then I truly want to talk to you because you clearly are doing something I am convinced most of us are not. Which is one way of saying I am fully aware that talk of this pain -- the overlapping, draw a circle around a myriad of things and label it as such kind -- might not resonate with you. You may have found a way to rid yourself of it. I am convinced this is entirely possible and that is one reason why I've never tried to be too harsh when I theorize that people I know who are very religious have that religion and faith as one of their means for addressing pain. I can't knock that approach. I have friends who have unique diets or fitness routines and by all observations and actions they are happy and healthy with a positive outlook and if they're experiencing pain -- again, we're talking physical and non physical -- they're either aces at hiding it or they've got answers I haven't found. There are people who are good at removing it from life's equation.
But they aren't the majority. It's not even close. At least not in my view. And I know this in my heart to be true because, among other reasons:
- One in 5 adult residents in my state have an alcohol dependency.
- Kids born after I became an adult (1991) have grown up in a world with active shooter drills that are just as prevalent as fire drills were when I was a kid.
- There is a gun out there for every American. More than one but even if we round down, holy fuck?!!
- Racism is a thing.
- Homophobia is a thing.
- Talking about a group, a race, or a gender when, as individuals, rarely know what in the blue hell we're talking about is a thing.
- Self-harm, dark thoughts, and suicidal thoughts among our youth and adults is high.
- People get in fist fights at sporting events and concerts; things we're supposed to be out at for fun.
- New generations begin smoking cigarettes decades after we universally know that shit will kill you.
I've never been more convinced that so much of what ails us is an inability to deal with our pain. And, worse, I have no clue how to fix that. I offer no regiments, very little advice, and even less actual wisdom as to what you, I, or anyone else can or should do about our pain in the short or long term. The only credit I give myself on this front is that I know it's there. It is there in droves.
It is an odd feeling in even writing this out because as I peck away word by word I do this from a place of happiness. I feel blessed most days to have the good fortune I do, to have the work I do and have achieved more successes than failures, to have turned losses into lessons and then applied those lessons toward, I hope, doing better today than I did yesterday. And yet I still come face to face with my own pain all the fucking time. Not daily, not as overwhelming or dramatic as these words may paint, but it does come. And like so many of us I rarely have the specific name or type for it. It is just there and at my best I can whittle it down to this smaller version and find a healthy way to alleviate it. Free of a substance, free of a dangerous outlet, free of a so-called remedy for one pain that really is just another form that will need a different method of relief and the cycled continues as thought it was the darkest episode ever of "Schoolhouse Rock".
I'll seal this up where I started: My father.
The truth is I am closing out my 40's in a few months and having lost him when I was 42 I feel like I've spent a massive chunk of the last decade trying not become him. Or, more accurately, not his problems or his pain. I don't drink. I exercise regularly even when it has been offset by a not remotely good diet or eating habits. I've played it safe professionally instead of taking the kinds of professional risks he took because there is this odd inner conflict between admiring that bravery but knowing it came with a heavier price. All this effort to not be something.
And yet even that has been painful.
Which is weird.
Because then it feels like I'm running away from someone that loved the hell out of me. On my better days, though, like today? Today I know that's not true. I'm not running from something or someone. Instead I'm embracing it as a challenge. To try every day to ask myself, "What hurts? What and where is the pain? How do you fix it? Can you?" and then looking for the best answers I can.
Some days I think I have some.
When I am sure I'll let you know.
J
I'm inspired to write a bit about it all today on what would have been the 80th Birthday of someone I knew that carried a lot of pain and, in reflection, was not very good at alleviating it, often for reasons completely beyond his control and very often for reasons he could. I think we're all like that in various degrees. We carry with us these nagging sources of pain that weight on us from emotional scars to literal joints and muscles that suffered damage and never quite healed us back to 100 percent. If we were ever truly 100 percent.
The would have been 80 year-old was my father. I lost him 8 years ago next month at age 72. Younger than he should have gone, sooner than he should have gone, and among the reasons for that is a pain he never could heal. Pain of a difficult childhood, the pain of working very hard and having high aspirations for himself, pain from a wounded ego when his aspirations didn't get the results he wanted, and a pain that just comes from this life being a lot. Because it is a lot, right?
The picture I just painted is terribly misleading, though. I say someone is or was in pain and we think sadness or immobility or what have you. But that wasn't him in the whole. Just a part. Because in all that pain there was happiness and laughter, inside jokes in a family he loved, belly laughs to the point of tears as the funny things his grandsons and granddaughter would do and say. Truly, I think I saw him shed tears more from laughing than I ever did from sorrow. And to this day I think his inability to cry from the latter was part of the problem. As the son who does cry easy and does emote and wears his heart on his sleeve it was often a challenge to relate to someone who couldn't. Or didn't. As if we can frame it so easily as a choice...
Pain, I believe, is at the heart of so many of our ills. It explains everything from addiction to self-abuse to the pain we inflict on others as a temporary fix to addressing our own hurt. Do it often enough and it becomes habitual, second nature. Drink enough, smoke enough, take a pill, buy enough, eat enough, numb enough, just make it go away. Work hard enough it will get better (it might), work hard and it's still not making a difference (that happens, too), keep up, hold back, twist it, turn it, burn it, block it out, whatever it takes. Chin up, don't get discouraged, treat yourself, don't beat yourself up --
SHUT THE FUCK UP.
If you've never had that moment with the internal or external voices telling you how to alleviate, fix, solve, or improve anything then I truly want to talk to you because you clearly are doing something I am convinced most of us are not. Which is one way of saying I am fully aware that talk of this pain -- the overlapping, draw a circle around a myriad of things and label it as such kind -- might not resonate with you. You may have found a way to rid yourself of it. I am convinced this is entirely possible and that is one reason why I've never tried to be too harsh when I theorize that people I know who are very religious have that religion and faith as one of their means for addressing pain. I can't knock that approach. I have friends who have unique diets or fitness routines and by all observations and actions they are happy and healthy with a positive outlook and if they're experiencing pain -- again, we're talking physical and non physical -- they're either aces at hiding it or they've got answers I haven't found. There are people who are good at removing it from life's equation.
But they aren't the majority. It's not even close. At least not in my view. And I know this in my heart to be true because, among other reasons:
- One in 5 adult residents in my state have an alcohol dependency.
- Kids born after I became an adult (1991) have grown up in a world with active shooter drills that are just as prevalent as fire drills were when I was a kid.
- There is a gun out there for every American. More than one but even if we round down, holy fuck?!!
- Racism is a thing.
- Homophobia is a thing.
- Talking about a group, a race, or a gender when, as individuals, rarely know what in the blue hell we're talking about is a thing.
- Self-harm, dark thoughts, and suicidal thoughts among our youth and adults is high.
- People get in fist fights at sporting events and concerts; things we're supposed to be out at for fun.
- New generations begin smoking cigarettes decades after we universally know that shit will kill you.
I've never been more convinced that so much of what ails us is an inability to deal with our pain. And, worse, I have no clue how to fix that. I offer no regiments, very little advice, and even less actual wisdom as to what you, I, or anyone else can or should do about our pain in the short or long term. The only credit I give myself on this front is that I know it's there. It is there in droves.
It is an odd feeling in even writing this out because as I peck away word by word I do this from a place of happiness. I feel blessed most days to have the good fortune I do, to have the work I do and have achieved more successes than failures, to have turned losses into lessons and then applied those lessons toward, I hope, doing better today than I did yesterday. And yet I still come face to face with my own pain all the fucking time. Not daily, not as overwhelming or dramatic as these words may paint, but it does come. And like so many of us I rarely have the specific name or type for it. It is just there and at my best I can whittle it down to this smaller version and find a healthy way to alleviate it. Free of a substance, free of a dangerous outlet, free of a so-called remedy for one pain that really is just another form that will need a different method of relief and the cycled continues as thought it was the darkest episode ever of "Schoolhouse Rock".
I'll seal this up where I started: My father.
The truth is I am closing out my 40's in a few months and having lost him when I was 42 I feel like I've spent a massive chunk of the last decade trying not become him. Or, more accurately, not his problems or his pain. I don't drink. I exercise regularly even when it has been offset by a not remotely good diet or eating habits. I've played it safe professionally instead of taking the kinds of professional risks he took because there is this odd inner conflict between admiring that bravery but knowing it came with a heavier price. All this effort to not be something.
And yet even that has been painful.
Which is weird.
Because then it feels like I'm running away from someone that loved the hell out of me. On my better days, though, like today? Today I know that's not true. I'm not running from something or someone. Instead I'm embracing it as a challenge. To try every day to ask myself, "What hurts? What and where is the pain? How do you fix it? Can you?" and then looking for the best answers I can.
Some days I think I have some.
When I am sure I'll let you know.
J