Pain can be a Guide
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/26
You can live too long, but you have to live too long to be that guide.
Pain can be a cruel deliverance driver, as in the singular case of David Goggins. However, that is someone as broken as a man who does nothing but eat and indulge. However, the former comes with more social rewards than the latter.
In more self-humane terms, pain can be a river flowing alongside the riverbanks of daily pleasures: delicious food, beautiful sights, enjoyable music, pleasant weather, friendly company, and satisfying work.
Pain is a prerequisite of embodied existence and a necessary path to longer-term satisfaction. I only speak from personal experience. Most of the more painful things in life — and plenty never spoken or written about — will be left to the grave for most of us.
We all have those. As one of my dearest old women friends, who is in her 70s now, told me in exasperation about nothing while gardening with her, “I think this is Hell.” It was firm. It was deep. It was worth the memory. That is Dale. That is in Fort Langley. We continued gardening.
Or old Bob, who considered me as a son, when I queried about his father, as his mother was still around, said, “He’s dead.” His father helped him build a building and then died in a car crash. That is in Fort Langley. He continued making lunch at his restaurant, in the building built by his father.
Or a young lady in her early 20s during work with another older woman who was mentoring said, “I was raped.” Silence. That is in Langley. We continue cleaning stall fronts at the ranch.
Or another old woman close to me sad in contemplation of suicide at her bed, “He molested me.” That’s in Fort Langley. Consolation does not provide much salve.
Or the young woman at the pub where I worked in multiple positions running out the back of the restaurant sitting and crying, screaming, punching the wall, “I fucking hate this so fucking much. It hurts so fucking bad.” We had to go back to shift. Her partner cheated on her. That’s in Fort Langley. Listening helped.
Or my father falling down the stairwell drunk, telling me to go fuck myself before cutting him out of my life and then entering major depression with anxiety about a decade ago. At the same time, every other area of life collapsed on me.
These pains, whether experienced personally or vicariously, are important. You have to encounter them and endure them.
You can live too long.
It is important to keep going, not stop, and to allow these moments of pain to be as important as allowing moments of pleasure. This river and this riverbank are the flow of life and a necessary integration for the development of experiential wisdom, which is to say, practical knowledge of the human condition.
It is a fulcrum between which the second self emerges. Your authentic self: Life is no longer a game or a simulation. It’s real, with real choices, consequences, loss, and gain.
You can live too long, but if you do not live too long, you miss passing on this necessary wisdom and the potential to experience more of the human condition.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
In-Sight Publishing 