Stop running from pain

This is a very honest and clear perspective of how life really is pain, or rather that pain is a fundamental part of life, of the human condition. And that trying to relieve the pain we go through, robs us of a fundamental part of being human. To feel pain, both physically, but most importantly, psychologically. And frankly, that one of the core ingredients in the most sought after and wonderful parts of life, actually is just that, pain.

We’re going to dive into the importance of pain in life from 3 fundamental perspectives that I believe we can all relate to, love, work and growth.

Love

Let’s first talk about our reality’s most talked about and fictionalized feelings, subjects and ideas, that is love. Love is something we all crave, and fundamentally need in our lives. We need to feel appreciated, cared for and even for someone to find us to be the best person to spend their time with. We dream about the reality of having someone to love, whether that is someone we’ve seen or know, or someone we imagine would be the perfect person for us.

That first instance, of longing and dreaming, is a form of pain. It’s what drives most of us to look for that person, that feeling of love we so sincerely want. It starts from a lack of love, a longing, a pain of feeling somewhat lonely and unloved. It can force us to look in all the wrong places. Because rather than looking for the healthy relationship with someone that we are truly compatible with, we might be so desperate to fill the void we built up from longing that we find the first person to show us any kind of love. We end up with the wrong people that only loves us in a few of the ways we truly deserve for two main reasons.

The first being that we don’t actually fall in love with the person, we fall in love with the idea of them based on our own fantasy of what the perfect person is to us. We are so caught up with the idea of love that we are blinded by it, constantly looking for the smallest possible proof of it’s existence in the people around us, resulting in us jumping on the first opportunity as it presents itself.

The second, more common one, is that we never start with understanding the love itself and how it has to start from within ourselves before we can accept it from anyone else. Truly this might be a natural part of actually learning what it means to love yourself before you let anyone else do it, but it doesn’t make it any less important of a realisation to have. Because truly, you must first understand your own value as a human being and as a partner. Because if you don’t value yourself first, the risk is incredibly high that any future partner you might choose won’t either.

All of this speaks to the importance of pain in the process of creating our relationship to love in our life. The first role pain has is in the dreaming and longing for love, which motivates us into action. The second role is that of the teacher, telling us through experiences with the people we choose to take a chance on, how we might be wrong and what we deserve and don’t deserve. And the final, most important role which we haven’t touched on just yet, is the pain found in the loss of a loves one, even if it’s not yet been realized.

Because once you’ve found the person for you, the one you feel you could not only walk through hell with, but you would be willing to invest your whole life to spend the rest of it with. At that point, you are faced with the fear of loosing them. The idea, most likely that they would somehow disappear from your life in a tragic accident, will cause deep feelings of anxiety and pure pain and might cause you to hold on to them and hug them extra hard one evening as that very fear creeps in.

All of this, to say, that a fundamental part of what we think is a feeling of pure joy, hopefulness and happiness, is actually the feeling of pain. Without the pain, love would simply not exist. We would not be motivated enough to seek out the person we so desperately long to spend a lifetime with, nor would we move away from the people that are simply wrong for us, and once we find our person, we wouldn’t truly love and appreciate them if we didn’t have that underlying feeling of fear of loss.

Work

No matter if you love what you do for work, or hate it, you are still subject to pain on a regular basis in one way or another. Men and women who work in service for your country, which doesn’t have to be in the military (police, fire rescue, doctors..) see the best and worst of humanity on a daily basis. They get to feel a huge level of service in what they do for other people every day, a meaning that few things can substitute, at the cost of seeing people do horrible things to one another. It’s a price few people can understand if they haven’t paid it themselves.

And even if you don’t have to endure this kind of pain in your line of work, you are still subjected to tasks that you find meaningless, tiresome, boring and unnecessary. You are on pay roll to perform tasks for someone else, and that will eventually result in you doing things you don’t particularly enjoy, because the people you work for don’t want to do it themselves. That’s part of having a job, that’s why you get paid. A job is a privilege only when you get to truly enjoy what you do, but at the center of it, will always be the work itself that needs doing.

A job requires professionalism, a sense of duty and responsibility in the role you are given, no matter where you work. It’s the ability to put yourself aside in service of the people you are made to serve. No matter what job you have, there can be nobility in what you do, really it’s up to you. And in all of that, is the pain and discomfort of simply doing your job. The act of putting yourself aside, and doing something in service of another.

So no matter where or what you do for work, pain will find you in many ways. What matters, in the end, is your attitude towards it based on the purpose of what you do. Be in service to others, in spite of the pain in the work you do.

Growth

If any of the three perspectives I chose today to represent the natural part of pain in life, growth would be the most central and natural one of them all. As you cannot find growth anywhere in life without pain. Growth requires you to embrace something new, whether that is an idea, piece of knowledge or a more weight on the bar at the gym. Growth demands that you leave behind what was in exchange for what will be. And with that, comes pain in many forms.

The most common pain in growth is the discomfort in learning something new, from having to understand new perspectives and facts, in order to form your own perspective and understanding of an idea or piece of knowledge. It requires you to let go of your perceived notions, what you think you know, in order to make room for what you are about to learn.

Growth will put you trough painful experiences in life where it demands that you see, hear and feel what it needs you to, in order for you to change in the way it needs you to. If you are in an unhealthy relationship, and you want to grow into a better person from that experience, growth will demand that you look at all of the situations and actions you took throughout that relationship and feel every ounce of pain with it. That, is how you learn from experience, by truly feeling the pain that is created from the experience.

Physical growth, both the natural part of growing as a child (actual growing pains), and growing muscle from working out, is painful. If you want to become physically stronger, not only will you have to lift heavy weights and move your body well, you have to consistently change up the weights and the movements to not allow your body to become comfortable and create a new normal. To become an athlete, you not only have to become stronger or faster, you have to learn complex techniques and movements and work tirelessly to master them, a very painful process.

Pain, is a natural part of growth, both physical and mental. It’s what forces you out of your current situation and create a new version of what normal looks like for your life. Without pain, or by running from pain, you are robbing yourself of the opportunity to grow into a better version of yourself. You are stifling your own potential.

Embrace it

As the title suggests, you should not run from the pain, but embrace it as a natural part of who you are, a human being. A human being that wants to love and be loved, to do great work and to grow in life. And with all of these things, comes pain in a lot of forms, all of which you must learn to accept and embrace. Pain is not meant to be enjoyed in itself, it is meant to be endured. It is meant to be felt, because it is in the pain that we really learn, what it means to love, what it means to do good work and above all, what it means to grow.

The life we have in today’s society rarely puts us in any real danger for our lives. So unless you are actually running for your own safety, if you are running from pain in any aspect of life, stop. Take a moment, and really look at what it is you are running away from. Is it really something dangerous, something you think would hurt you, or is it simply the discomfort from having to deal with something? Having to make a tough decision in a relationship, at work or in your own life?

Realize that, by running away from one pain, you are most likely putting yourself through another pain. Because pain is a natural part of it all, of life. You can’t run from it, no matter how hard you try. No matter how heavy the drugs you try to take are, they will themselves bring back the pain in an even heavier form.

Do yourself a favor. Start embracing it, little by little, day by day. Do small things that scare you, that are uncomfortable and challenging. Put yourself just a tiny step outside your own comfort zone. Get used to feeling that discomfort. It’s not going to kill you. What it will do, is make you stronger and a lot more confident in your own ability.

So really, it comes down to a single choice. Do you embrace the pain that comes with the choices you want to make, or do you live with the inevitable pain that comes from running away from the choices you know you want to make?