# pain: some pains can be embraced rather than drugged away

pain is a signaling system. it signals that something is not right. there are two types of pain: sudden spike and chronic pain. if you suddenly feel pain then most of the time something changed around you suddenly and you probably even know the reason. in this case pain is a useful signal but it can get into the way of resolving the underlying issue. e.g. if a bear is eating my leg then i might just give up everything because it is too painful. maybe i would fight or run more if the missing leg would not be bothering me. so in this case making the pain go away might be very useful.

the chronic pain is different. and by chronic i mean the one that last for very long time. i do not mean physiological pain only but mental too. inconvenience might be a better term for the latter. we cannot simply wish the chronic pain away. so what do we do? we medicate ourselves with painkillers. in the inconvenience's case we start using various tools and gadgets to make things more comfortable. this indeed makes the pain go away so it is a reasonable solution.

however you could look at this differently. pain is something that you are intrinsically motivated to alleviate. what if rather numbing the pain, you alter your lifestyle in a way that the pain is manageable? with this approach you do not feel at mercy of your doctors and drugs anymore. you feel that you are in charge of life. you start researching your pain. you start experimenting with things. basically you get a goal and start living. all your actions start to have a meaning. the "why am i doing this?" feeling is not around. it is not an easy life. every day you wake up, the pain greets you. it does not allow you to slack off. you remain passionate about alleviating your pain.

and the nice about this is that you can always inflict pain on yourself. depressed because you are invisible and there is no point in life? start walking barefoot on the streets. you will immediately notice trash or dog poo on the ground. you will start moaning how all this trash and dog poo is bad for us all. you might start picking up the trash in your immediate vicinity in order to make it habitable for yourself or at least arrange a daily cleaning service on your street. you start fighting for clean streets. you now matter because you want to achieve something. and that something is only about fixing your inconvenience: making sure you can walk around barefoot without getting too dirty.

others will think you are crazy. they will try to talk some "sense" into you. get shoes or else all sorts of bad thinks will happen to you. some people will even get angry at you. do not let them to get to you or otherwise discourage you. do not take naysayers seriously. ignore them. you cannot achieve something without making some people angry. let them have their boring life. yours is now full of excitement and possibilities. focus on that. after a while you will not even notice the pain anymore. your body adapted to it naturally. it learned that this pain might be okay after all and decided to not to bother you anymore. all you need to survive is the initial period of the pain. do not underestimate your body's and mind's adapting capability.

this does not mean that you should go all out and do all sorts of crazy stuff. it works only up to a point anyways (yerkes-dodson law). and this takes a very special personality. most people are not up to this. there are two lessons you can take away: 1. if you ever feel uncomfortable, maybe keep yourself in that state just a little longer just to see what happens, 2. if you see other people doing crazy things despite the apparent pain, do not feel superior to them. all the nice things we have today is thanks to crazy visionaries who went against the establishment, made a lot of people angry and sometimes even suffered a lot in exchange. try to understand their motivations instead. try to not obsess about what and how they are doing things but rather what they are achieving. after all, do not we all want clean streets?

published on 2019-03-01

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