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Pain demands to be felt!

Fundamentally, there are two ways to kill a person. Either you stop the heart or you stop the flow of oxygen to the brain. Likewise, there are two ways to life; Life is a combination of happiness and pain.

We live in such a fast pace world, everything happens so quickly, we have got fast version, fast food, fast Internet. I think we have lost the idea of pains and patience.

I was with a friend telling her mum “she hates pains,” then the mum said; “well, avoid painful stuff.”

Well, she’s right but she should have been more plain with her. Obviously, pains are necessary for growth. Nobody likes it but avoidance will not serve us. It only brings us more anguish in the long run.

The response that will serve us best is to feel and learn how to endure it when it comes. As author John Green wisely put it, “Pain demands to be felt.”

Some of the hardest moments of my life have prepared me for the kind of courage I would have never had if life had been easy. This doesn’t mean that I want to experience pain or that it doesn’t bother me but it means that rather than seeing pain as a hindrance to my growth, I view it as necessary tool.

Pain has taught me things that happiness never could. Pain has made me realize how everything is, how temporary ‘good times’ can be. Pain pushed me to change, grow and shape myself in new ways.

I’m not saying that pain is something we should all experience in order to reach those places, but what I am saying is that pain will not stop you from being your happiest self one day, instead, it might even give you the push on the back that you need to get there sooner.

Having a broad perspective on life gives you the strength to move forward through painful times. There is a little use in having a machine which you cannot operate without a manual. Just like to drive a car, we have to learn how to operate steering wheel, the clutch, the brake, the gear, and so on. To move towards stability of the mind, we must know the basic principles about our life force energy.

To hurt is to be human, no matter how much we want to avoid it. Instead of viewing emotional pain – grief, loss, sadness, anxiety, stress, fear – as a threat or as something inherently bad, we can get curious about these feelings, the wisdom they offer and the purpose they serve.

As Rumi reminds us in the poem. The Guest house, every emotion is simply a guest. No emotion is ever permanent, but each one serves a purpose.

Each has been sent as a guide from beyond. So, we should learn to sit with each emotion and ask why it is present.

It can be scary to make contact with the pain that life brings, especially if that is exactly what you have been trying to avoid doing your whole life. It can feel overwhelming and unknown.

The things we fear the most could also be the things that are most beneficial for us. From pain, we can become better and stronger people.

Learning into the feeling does not mean that the emotion controls you, but rather that you are simply giving it the space it needs to move through you.

Pain demands to be felt…….

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10 Comments

  1. Quan

    What a nice read! I, for one, am a witness of the effects of avoidance of pain. Everything builds up, so far we keep on avoiding it and the adverse effects of it will be so detrimental. We need to feel it and live through it that way we’d be a stronger version of us before it. Besides, life’s no walk in the park, we’ll surely experience a painful situation or condition which in our minds at that moment could be the end of the world, but we just need the right mentality, courage and people to live through it. It’s hard, it’s one of the hardest things in the world, but we don’t grow in our comfort zone. We need to live through the pain that life’s brought to us and become a better human along the way.

  2. Linder

    Good thanks,…..

  3. Jhelhai

    Pains demand to be felt indeed, nice write up

  4. Degokay

    The troubles of life you can’t avoid, the worries you can decide to hold a space in your head or let them go.

    This article reminds me of a story about two monks. One is old while the other is younger. On their way, they saw a lady trying to cross a trench, the eldest monk carried the woman and helped her cross to the other side.

    Few hours into the walk, the youngest ask; I thought monks are not supposed to carry women, and the eldest said, yes but I’m wondering why you are still carrying her.

    Turns out the man already dropped the lady once he helped her crossed the trench but the youngest monk is still carrying the woman on his mind.

    That’s how pain is, you can accept it, feel it and let it go or you can carry it with you all your life.

  5. I’m now not sure where you’re getting your info, however great topic.
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  6. Abdulafeez Akinloye

    Perception of pain is a concept differently believed by individuals. Our experiences in life confer different pain thresholds to us, some have threshold and some with low threshold. But it is realised that the more you’re able to endure pain, the stronger and more resilient you become to the inevitable challenges in this life. Inadvertently, pain needs not only to be felt, but also to be learned and endured! Majority of people grossly misinterpret ability to feel and endure pain as poverty, this is very wrong. Do countries wait for war to begin before they allocate millions of dollars to procure arms to protect their countries? No. It is just an intuitive mechanism to prepare for anything you can not fully control. Additionally, pain perception can be used to send a message. Once, I read about a monk who sacrificed his perception of pain to bring a massive turn around in the development of his environment. The monk and his people were suffering so hard from the harsh treatment from the government that one day they organized a protest. This monk sat on the road in their usual position for meditation ?, someone poured fuel on him and he allowed himself to be set ablaze. The monk was burning and smeltering without twitching a finger. It was an incomprehensible infernal scene that revealed the level of endurance to pain. It showed what suffering majority of the people had been going through and how much pain they had endured from the maltreatment. That singular event got to the mind of the most cruel member of the government, revealed the humanity in them and return their sense of compassion and empathy. They changed their ways.

    Pain is part of us, we should feel it, it does not mean suffering but strength.

  7. Abdulafeez Akinloye

    Reference to that story is in the Mark Manson’ book “Everything is Fucked”.

  8. Very interesting points you have mentioned, regards for posting.

  9. Many thanks for making the effort to discuss this, I feel strongly about this and like learning a great deal more on this subject. If possible, as you gain expertise, would you mind updating your website with a great deal more info? It’s extremely helpful for me.

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