The Power of Pain

The world changes when you're in pain. Different things matter. You don't have any mental energy to waste on superficiality. Voices that annoy you when you're lounging on the sofa in your air-conditioned condo have no negative effect on you when your guts are exploding with white hot torment. Faces you would normally consider unattractive are no longer characterized solely by their visual format when your own face is streaming with tears. Distinctions between ugly and beautiful are neutralized in a fiercely deep awareness that appearance is not the crucial issue in life. Substance is what counts. External details fade.

When you're lying in the ditch naked and beaten half to death, you don't even notice if the guy who kneels by your side and lifts you to safety happens to be your least favorite person in the world. You only know that you are grateful to him, whoever he is. Pain, then, although dimming many of the standard powers of perception, has the ability to open in your soul a clearer set of eyes. For a moment you glimpse a world uncolored by your personal prejudices. Pain proves to you that the world doesn't have to be nice to you; but some times it is anyway, and when that happens the only correct response is gratitude. So in the end, pain does more than hurt. Pain heals.

Things I Worry About

 

I worry about heavy swinging things. There are a lot of heavy swinging things in this world. And that really concerns me because, you know, I have a head. And my head, well, it kind of sticks up out of the rest of my body in a highly conspicuous manner. Almost like it's daring something to hit it. So I can't help wondering - and I wouldn't be surprised if you've wondered this, too - What's the likelihood that my head will be capable of bopping through life without once or twice encountering a heavy swinging thing? Heavy swinging things are notorious for swinging heavily; and some day, one of them might swing heavily into my head. That's one of the things I worry about.

Another thing I worry about is pushy sharp things. Every day people grab ahold of pushy sharp things and tear into cardboard and plywood and drywall and all kinds of other substances that are a lot harder than my stomach. That bothers me, because I've seen what these pushy sharp things can do, and they're all over the place. We see them daily in our own communities. What's the likelihood that all the pushy sharp things are going to stay clear of all the stomachs when they do business in such close quarters? I ask myself this question from time to time, and you'd better ask yourself the same. It never hurts to consider all the possibilities.

Then I start thinking, you know, what if some day I just start saying stuff? You know the sort of stuff I mean. What if my lips just suddenly go crazy and start forming all these weird vowels and consonants and diphthongs and triphthongs and somehow it all comes together to form these really obnoxious sentiments? I could lose all my friends instantly, bingo. Not a pleasant prospect. Of course I wish I could say this will never happen, but one can't be sure. Lips have been known to form the wrong diphthongs before. It can happen again... to you. And your life could be ruined. Just so you know.

If anyone is interested in fretting further, may I present to you a few more worrisome topics for inquiry. For instance, heavy rolling things, things that stain you pink for life, things that if positioned correctly could remove your eyelashes, and the ever-present chance that one morning you'll wake up take your morning shower walk out the door and realize two hours later that you completely forgot to get dressed.

 

The Educator

The bent man huddled at the podium, shuffling his notes. Around his shabby form the room was white and humming with subdued illumination. On the altar stood a picture of his wife, framed in silver, smiling inappropriately. Just behind, an alabaster jar contained her dust. We shifted, waiting.

The widower cleared his throat. "For those of you who knew her in her later years," he began, and the apology followed. Alzheimers. Everyone remembered. But if we only knew her in those unfortunate times, he continued, then we had not known his wife at all. Her intellect, he promised us, had once been her great gift to the world. She had been an educator, a great educator. Across from him a table laden with diplomas and certificates stood stiffly, several square feet of recognition - unrecognized for what it signified. Afterward I tried to read the calligraphic testaments to her academic brilliance, but found myself suddenly illiterate. The tears that reduced me to preschool status reminded me of the woman I had known. Her ashen face, her ashen mind, her ashen words repeated senselessly, questions on a carousel, asking me about my education, my education, my education. I recalled how I had answered each successive time with greater understanding. My wisdom grew in simplicity. She taught me, this great educator, that information, content, meant little; interaction was everything, the process of give and take, over and over, a cycle of infinity.

I left the funeral repeating to myself in mindful mindlessness: I knew you. I knew you.