The Pain Speaking..

On the tables of liquor bars, in the moaning of labour rooms, in the stories of old age homes, in the words of suicide notes, inside the cells of jails, in the silence of the house of death, in the lines of tragic love songs – only one emotion rules: the pain.

Pain is sometimes physical and sometimes emotional. Unlike the shameless and purposeless happiness, most of the pains come with their own dignity and purpose.

When it is physical, pain is a mechanism of telling our brain that some part of the body is damaged and needs attention. It may be a cut, a bruise, a burn or complete breaking of something. The brain immediately makes arrangements like blocking blood loss.

But emotional pain is more complex. Body has very limited faculties to handle it or may be our stupidity acquired externally from our civilization, our societies and our education prevent our body from handling emotional pains well.

We fail to handle pains for many reasons.

One, we do not understand and accept the reason for pain. When we encounter a pain, we fail to sit back for some time and find the root cause. A boy rejected by a girl, a woman cheated on by her husband, a student failed in the exam and so on forget that they, directly or indirectly are the reason for their own pains. Some of such pains give the option of coming out of them by some alternatives. We just need to think without being emotional. When emotions have locked you in a room of pain, you cannot ask the same emotions to open the lock. Make the key available to your intelligence.

Two, we knock the wrong doors for coming out of the pain. Like we have pain killers for physical pains, we have pain killers for emotional pains too. We pour the liquor in the tumblers of our weaker minds. We seek solution for our pains on the tables of bars. We ring the bells of temples to drive away the pain. We seek God’s help who is neither the reason, nor the witness, nor the victim to understand our pain and drive it away. The pain hides until the liquor is present in our body and returns as soon as we are sober. The god can never replace your loved one. At the last level, we knock the doors of death; we commit suicide. We decide to come out of life permanently instead of coming out of temporary pain. It's not the lack of windows to happiness, it is the unwillingness to open the windows that keeps us in pain.

Three, strangely we start retaining the pain and enjoy self-pity without understanding that every pain has a validity period and has a purpose. We sometimes start enjoying people’s sympathy about our pain. We start getting disconnected from the world intentionally with the fear of losing pain. We make all possible efforts to keep the pain with us by retaining all the memories of people who left us or whom we lost. We listen to the songs that keep the pain alive. We glorify our pain and decide to live with it without realizing that life is meant to live. We forget that we should send-off pain after its validity is over. We become deaf to life’s calls. We become blind to the best healer: time.

Four, in contrary to the case above, we try to escape or get rid of pain as soon as possible. We try to stretch our hands too early towards some solutions and some people, to get rid of the pain given by others, mostly to take the revenge. But, that is not how pain operates. Pain is like fog in the air in the morning. It takes its own time to get cleared. The best way to come out of pain is to accept and be in the pain until it completes its work. We must know that some damages are beyond repair, some people are beyond replacement. When we lose them or when they leave us, life feels shattered. That’s when the pain comes to play its role. The pain has to clearly register in your mind that the person's role or that time is over and does not come back. And this registering takes time. If you do not let the pain do its work or hurry up in getting out of pain and seek some alternatives, the loss does not get registered properly and you may try seeking and searching for them again just to get disappointed again. Instead, let the pain register the loss fully in us. It’s okay to cry out loud and let pain rule you until its purpose is served.

Any pain is more painful only when we either try to retain it for longer than it should or when we try to get rid of it sooner than it completes its job. Give pain the time and value it deserves, neither more nor less.

The real value of pain is seen after it leaves us. It becomes a memory. It becomes a lesson. It becomes an experience. It becomes a torch for the paths we walk.