And I have a suspicious feeling that being pushed and/or pulled out of someone’s uterus didn’t feel so pleasant for us either. Life started with pain. But, Mr. fucking philosopher, you’re saying, just because something starts a certain way doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way. First of all, thank you for calling me a philosopher. Second of all, you’re right. But here is my interpretation of Dr. Arendt’s/Dr. Hoye’s words: everything begins with conflict (or violence). Not just life. And everything includes every event in a given life. We’ll come back to that. But first…science!
Sir Isaac Newton’s second law of motion states that an object at rest will stay at rest and an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. This is often referred to as the law of inertia. According to this principle, everything has inertia. Which means to change the course of anything, an outside force must be acted upon something. So to change the course of say a human life in any meaningful way, an outside force must be acted upon said life. And if everything begins with violence (and violence carries with it pain), then in order to impose such an outside force one must start with pain. Yeah, I’ll let you pick your jaw up real quick.
Oh ho you uneducated fuck. The laws of motion apply to objects. Are you saying that human lives are nothing but objects? In a sense I am actually. I am operating under the premise that Thomas Hobbes operated under. That is, human beings are matter in motion. Which means that the laws of motion apply to humans much the same way that they apply to every other thing in the known universe. By pointing out, however, that humans are subject to the rules of the universe, I am not saying that mankind is a mere collection of objects. To jump to such a conclusion would be preposterous and shame on you for doing so. If you wouldn’t mind just ignoring all the conclusions I have jumped to, that’d be great.
Let me sum up all of that as simply as I can. Life begins with pain and any meaningful change to life must also begin with pain. So it is logical to say to that life is in fact pain, in light of how influential pain is in life. As has been stated, pain is integral to life. So I am choosing to define it as follows: pain is necessary and conducive for growth and therefore happiness within human beings. That isn’t a very good definition, though, is it?
That definition does kind of suck. It is so incomplete. So let us go back to the four ways that Encarta defines pain real quick like. An unpleasant physical sensation or feeling of discomfort (also related to the corporeal form). I’ve already explained somewhat the biological necessity for pain, that pain is the body telling the body to avoid a certain stimuli. And these first definitions go with that idea. An illness or an injury is usually accompanied by unpleasant physical sensations or discomforting feelings. That is your body telling your mind that something just isn’t right. Without this pain, you would have no clue that you need to seek help. So, as has been stated, pain is necessary.
That third definition is typically what modern humans get so hung up on: emotional distress. So I’m going to break that down as best as I can. Emotional: of or relating to the emotions. That was easy enough. Distress is a little more difficult in my opinion. As a former lifeguard, the word distress will always evoke images of drowning in my mind (signs to look for in a distressed swimmer, etc.). In the opinion of this uneducated fuck, then, emotional distress is drowning in emotion.
Drowning is not a pleasant experience (or so I’ve heard). It would be safe to assume that drowning in emotion would not be pleasant either. But drowning, like any accident, can be avoided. The precautions taken to avoid drowning are a form of risk management. You learn how to swim, you wear a life jacket, you become lifeguard certified, yadda yadda. But you still get in the water. Yes there is always a risk that you may drown (in both water and emotion). Here’s the point of the drowning illustration: there will always be a chance for pain, just as there is always a chance to drown. It’s an unavoidable risk.
The last definition is fucking hilarious in my book. Something or somebody troublesome. So anything that is frustrating or tedious or anyone that is obnoxious or difficult is considered painful. Crossword puzzles are tedious; Sudoku is frustrating. How many people on this planet regularly perform those tasks? And why do they do it? Because they get satisfaction out of it! There is a sense of accomplishment, of reward, in finishing such a task. What about talking with a difficult person? In my not-so-humble opinion, every person on this God forsaken rock we call home is difficult in some way, shape, or form. And we still talk with each other. Why? Because a good conversation is rewarding!
All of that being said, here is the way in which I would fully define pain: pain is the necessary and unavoidable force that leads to accomplishment. Pain is the hard work out regimen that leads to a six pack of abs. Pain is that stack of rejection letters from a dozen different employers that motivates you to prove said employers wrong. Pain is that psychotic family that forces you to go away, to school or to the military or to travel the world. Pain is what leads to the good life.
You’re trying so hard to disagree. You don’t want to admit that I have a point. Doing so would call your entire life into question. So let me try to unpack this for you.
I talked with a girl at a party once. Let’s call her Anne. And Anne said something that left me reeling (and what first got me thinking on the subject of pain). She was so afraid of being hurt again (by a man, by a job, by friends, by the world) that she was going to stay at her dead end job (which she claimed to hate), stay single (which she seemed to enjoy), keep most people at arm’s length (which she is great at), and generally dull her senses with drugs and alcohol. Sound familiar? Anne is a mirror for each and every one of us.
I’m not going to pick on Anne. She’s lived a hard life; she’s been knocked down too many times to count and she no longer wants to pick herself back up. So when she found a comfortable place to lay her head, she naturally didn’t want to leave. If fear of pain lead her to a shit job and a one way ticket to the bottom of the bottle, though, is a comfort zone really all that comfortable?
And this isn’t just Anne’s story. It’s mine. It’s yours. It’s all of ours. How many of us hide from who and what we really are simply because we’re afraid to face pain? We let that fear win, we make pain the enemy, and we lose our true selves to the monotony of mediocrity. We can recognize that our shitty little lives are just that: shitty. But we seem incapable of doing anything about it. It is in this existential crisis that we are made or we break.
Andrew Boyd would say that the only way to ever truly move out of the slump caused by the fear of pain is with more pain. One of the chapters in his short proverb book, Daily Afflictions, is titled “Deeping the Crisis”. This little essay states that when paralyzed with fear of pain, when we are stuck in our comfort zones but so desperately want out, we must hurt more in order to force ourselves to action. There it is again: pain as motivating force. We already hurt; the knife is already embedded in our flesh. Twist the knife, push it in deeper. And then the path will be clear. But it will hurt like hell. On a side note, I highly recommend Daily Afflictions to everybody. It’s a short read with very poignant messages.
Letting pain motivate seems like such a radical idea. Yet, the more I think (and I hope you as well) about it, the more it makes sense. Because, as Tyler Durden tells the narrator in Fight Club, without pain there is nothing. He then goes on to say that it’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything. Mr. Boyd’s words though Tyler’s mouth. Before we move on, I want you to imagine losing everything. You are Job. Your livelihood has been destroyed, your family murdered in front your eyes, your health stripped from your body like old clothing. Tyler would say that Job is now free. Mr. Boyd would agree, claiming that the choices Job was too scared to make are now the only ones available to him. We should all aspire to be Job.
It’s time to wind this bad boy down. But there is one last thing I would like to say before I conclude this essay. Pain is often associated with love. And it should be.
Love is the most powerful of all human emotions. So it should come with no surprise that love is always accompanied by some amount of pain.
Anne had been hurt before in the arena of love. So she avoided any kind of commitment because it was safer; there was less pain if she didn’t have to commit. I’ve been guilty of that same offense. And I’m sure you have as well. It’s almost like getting hurt in a relationship surprised us, and because of that surprise we don’t want to try again.
How did it shock us that love could hurt? Had we all forgotten that famous scene of the Wedding Singer where Adam Sandler drunkenly belts out “Love Stinks”? There’s a reason that scene that stands out so much: love really does fucking stink!
Contemporary rock band Halestorm released a song in 2012 titled “Love Bites (So Do I)”. This song is actually what made me a fan of the band. And I’m going to be honest: it is just a generic love-gone wrong head-banging fest. That is not a bad thing (great song in this uneducated fuck’s opinion (should I add I have a huge crush on Lzzy Hale? (call me!))). But the breakdown of the song that is why