Opinion: Pain is good for us.

Pain is always around. Physical, mental, we’ve all experienced it. I’m convinced everyone has been through some kind of suffering. As someone who is no stranger to what I perceive to be pain and suffering, I’ve heard a lot of people’s opinions on both their own pain and others.

‘Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging young things to grow.’

I’ve heard this quote a lot, and I don’t know who said it first. I agree with it, though.

I believe pain is like manure too. A tall, stinking heap of pain, I envision it festering, rotting, the ground underneath it softening to the consistency of peat, bugs everywhere. Not exactly the healthiest imagery. It brings much negativity to one’s life. When the perception of pain, sorrow, etc keeps piling up, I picture a person with a heavy load… gasping for air under the load they are bearing, shaking with every step — not knowing when they will collapse under the pain that feels too great to bear much longer.

I live everyday with pain. Not incapacitating pain, but pain that tugs at your heart strings — the family issues, the regret of past decisions, the amends I should’ve made, and so on.

It makes its presence known as soon as I wake up in the morning. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so. I view it like this: All of the pain in my heart piled up in one spot — it would be very painful and like a sharp edge on a dagger, poking me. However, I acknowledge and live my life trying to spread it around like manure- small amounts of pain remind me that my life is finite, and I should be thankful. The small amounts of pain regarding family makes me that much happier to be around them- the memories of prison life are painful to relive at times — but after I’m done replaying them in my head for the day, I walk out my front door a little more grateful for my freedom. I call it “spreading the manure around”.

I wonder — I’m just letting myself question life at the moment. I have no answer, just thoughts. Nowadays, I live a much quieter life than I used to, and I often catch myself ruminating on the meaning of suffering, and how it has shaped me.

Is suffering unequally distributed? Do some people have it harder than others when it comes to pain?

What is the relationship between our perception of ‘privilege’ and suffering?

Does a ‘spoiled brat’ from the 1% of the population suffer the same as a cancer patient who has lived their whole life in poverty?

Is the depressed middle-class suburban child’s suffering as valid as the malnourished child’s, in a war-torn country?

I think everyone has their own version of suffering — it is the input that we all share. We all know the feeling of sorrow.

My opinion is that we all suffer — so we cannot say “ you think you have it rough? Listen to what’s going on with so and so!!”

That is insanity.

Maybe now that my life is much less turbulent — I’ve had time to explore what empathy is. I feel for those in the cold concrete cells with nothing but time ahead of them… Not knowing their release date. Not knowing if their loved ones will come to visit.

Empathy for others’ pain — this has been a big lesson for me in the past few years as I grew. Unmasking the facades, making the amends, expressing the emotions. Still just discovering so many things — I can’t find out the answers to everything, but the talks I have with my fellow people make me hungry for deeper exploration.