Pain

Pain is a reflection of our emotions when inflicted with some form of discomfort. Its is a difficult feeling, but at the same time very vital. Pain is normal and even natural. Its purpose to to inform us and we need to learn from it. Also without it we will not be able 'really' appreciate the feeling of pleasure. How much we want to run away from pain but in any form of reality, it is sure to exist. Physical pain is rather easy to bear as we have our reasoning intact, and this type of pain is simple to understand, it pains because it’s bleeding. Emotional pain is more difficult to cope with as it directly affects our ability to think objectively. Body easily surrenders to such pain. Sometimes physical pains can be pleasurable, a classic example is childbirth. But emotional pain is almost always painful, but we cannot say it’s harmful. Pain leave deep imprints on you, they live with you, they change you. Even if we think of physical pain, the wounds heal with time, but the emotional trauma attached to it haunts us long after the physical scars are gone.

Pain becomes far more dangerous when we are not able to express it; this soundless pain is a slow and painful killer. There may be many reasons why we cannot express it, one is fear, other may be we are not sure whether to express it or not and if yes, how? One of age old recipe to abase the effect of pain is to express it. But it is not of much help, at least in the latter case. One more cure, which can be implemented, is to find the cause of pain and try to kill it. This works fine for physical pain when we can think objectively, but in case of emotional pain, things are not that straight. Other cure is to take some help from others. Here also, help means correct help, not any help. Now how to find whether it is a correct help or not. This again is dependent on some rational thinking. Probably, a help will qualify to be a correct help if it helps the person to solve the problem, not solves the problem for him/her, also it should not be any imposed help, and it should not solve by obscuring the problem and by giving some comfortable, yet false solution. These types of fake-helps will defeat the purpose of the pain inflicted.

There may be many different theories on why we experience pain. Some of the pains are self-inflicted, and others are attributed to forces not under our control. As far as, self inflicted pains are concerned they are more complex in nature and more painful to bear. Pain coming from external source is easier to bear because we never own the cause, so it’s easy to disown the result too. But in case of external pain sometimes the frustration that we are not able to change the factors that effects us give us more pain than the actual case. In that case too, the internal pain is still more difficult to bear, because the frustration not to control oneself is more hurtful.

The cause of pain range from a direct discomfort to us to a remote discomfort to someone else (this ' someone else' can be a loved one or any stranger from any geography), from wrong done to you to the wrong done by you and the guilt associated, from an external flush of emotions to an internal civil war. Seems like we are going through a complex mixture of pains at any point in time. Some people/philosophies also say that our associations with external world result in more pain. This can be true but what can be done with the internal pain and is it fine to run away from the world because it is painful to be with it. Sometimes, this running itself results in internal pain.

Also, pain is very personal experience. Pain is conceived and experienced differently by everyone. It’s mainly because we react to different situations differently. Since it is such a personal thing, people (other than who is experiencing it) tend not to understand it fully and hence cannot provide the correct help.

When it is even difficult to understand a pain that you experience, its seems childish to write about it in general. But there can be a general consensus on some of things like pain hurts, its quiet normal/natural/essential and there is no escaping it.