Sometimes life seems so full of pain. This is one of those seasons when it is all around me. I feel like a number on the roulette table. The ball is hitting everyone around me... and if I wait long enough, the odds say that it will find me. It's part of life though right? (insert annoyingly insensitive catch phrase here such as "buck up" or "there, there")
Am I the only one that is scared of this? Scared of the day that pain comes knocking on my door and moves in with me. I dread the day when I find out that I have lost something that is part of what shapes my existence. Is that what makes us "human"... that fear of loss? For some that thing they're so afraid to lose is a mother, for some it's a brother, for some a husband, for some a wife...for some it's a car, or baseball card, or beach body. Regardless of what it is, what do you do with it when it happens? What would you do? Well, I'm not a betting man (except when I'm doing all my betting) but i would guess that I would struggle to find reasons to go on. I would run myself ragged trying to find reason in it. I would disappear...or implode. I would not however bet the farm on my ability to cope with the suffering, or my ability to deal. I can't see how any insight or perspective could come out of pain.
But it does doesn't it?
Why is it that we as humans typically see the most growth, the most development right in the heart of our pain. It is through our hardships that we are shaped. Through our suffering that we change. It is almost as if pain is a necessary component to our changing. Like our own will to change isn't quite enough to get us over that threshold. It's undeniable. Pain is progress. So what is it about humans that requires such a violent shaking of foundations to actually create an environment conducive to transformation. Why do we need the "tough love"?
Maybe part of what makes us human is this addiction to the expected. If we know what is coming, we're comfortable. And I love being comfortable. No changes in character, no shifts in the scenery, no twists in the plot. Sure, we need a little variety now and then, but variety has to be approved by some pencil pusher who hasn't had anything close to a date in a couple of millennia and is intent on feeling powerful that day. So let's just say variety and comfort don't rub shoulders much. Comfort gets so far inside us that it becomes a drug. We'll do anything to keep it, to get more of it. And it takes something like this pain to jar us loose from comfort's grip. Maybe this is what makes us "human". Who explores the wild when they have a deluxe jungle hut with a lazy boy, hot tub, and 60 inch plasma?
And even if you are enlightened enough to not be addicted to comfort and therefore aren't in need of the sobering slap that pain freely offers you, you still have to deal with the fact that you are going to feel pain anyway. Even if it's not your own, you'll probably empathize with someone, and feel it anyway. And why is that necessary? Like your own pain that you'll encounter throughout your life isn't enough. You'll feel someone else's pain as well. And maybe that will be enough to wake you up, maybe that is as close as you need to get to grow.
But if I really were to take a shot at it, if I really were to take a stab in the dark...I'd have to say that it is our ability to walk with others in pain, our natural ability to empathize and walk along side the fallen and broken, and create community within this pain, that makes us "human". It is the reaction to the pain that creates growth. Not the stimulus of the pain, but the reaction to it that gives us the chance to progress. To move closer to a full existence. So I guess I have to embrace the pain, to engage it, to walk with it. All the while knowing that this is life. Life has hardship. Who would have thought that Mr. T, speaking as Clubber Lang, would have delivered such a rich, yet simple prophetic word about life when he said, "Prediction?... Pain." He was warning a generation that there's no way around it. And I have a whole life to figure out how to be okay with pain. To try and accept life as it is and embrace all that it is to be fully human.
2 comments:
Hey Cory good to see you post again! Mr. T a prophet and there is more analogy to life out of boxing. It seems to me that the whole theme woven into the Bible has much to do with Suffering and in particular with Jesus himself. And it seems any promise of reprieve has less to do with anything in this side of time. It seems to me that the more pain I experience draws me closer (hopefully) to the Lord Himself, who it seems, cherishes this time that we can spend together in communion both with Him and with others. This growth thing has a deep etch to it. Suffering, pain, they equate a connection-and they aren't evil intentioned.
Good stuff Cory,
man, I have so many thoughts on pain in general, but here's something...
My fear more than anything, is getting to the end of my life and being like, "Wow, I sure was comfortable most of the time." Wow, that would suck. I want Joy. I want beauty. I want adventure. And I have it. But within that I have rest and comfort.
Every time I experience pain I get a taste of what Jesus willingly endured for us, and for the Father. He came from a place of no pain, to a place of constant pain, for love. So while I have no choice, he did. What does that love look like? I get to see it whenever pain comes my way, and I wouldn't understand unless I felt that pain. I would rather see and experience that kind of love than be comfortable.
What makes us human? Worship. What will we worship? Jesus, or comfort?
Tawmis.
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