I’ve often heard ‘pain is a teacher’, that struggling to get through something difficult hurts, but make you stronger. I would agree with that.
But I don’t know that pain ‘teaches’ you. At least, not in ways you’d want to learn or be shaped. In Hapkido, as in many martial arts, the joint locks and joint manipulations and other actions of using control to stop violence…they all rely on a simple note: “The body will, given the chance, move away from pain.” Put enough pressure on a wrist, and you don’t need to break it to make your point.
(The mind, probably not coincidentally, moves in the opposite direction. Or at least, if, as Heinlein says, “pleasure is the absence of pain”, consider the 2014 “Just Think” study, where people were left in a blank room with nothing to do except…if they really wanted…to give themselves electric shocks.
This is simple; if we avoid pain, we simply do nothing.
It turns out that the mind sometimes considers ‘doing nothing’ to be a far worse pain than…well, that Harvard study where they put people into a blank room for a quarter hour or so, with nothing to do except (if they really wanted to) give themselves an electric shock for now reason.
67% of men gave themselves at least one shock.
25% of women did the same.
Most of them did it at least a few times, too. And one person pressed the button 190 times in 15 minutes.
Pain is a coach.
Pain pushes you.
Sometimes in the wrong direction…or in the right direction for it, but the wrong one for you.
But it pushes you.
It’s not usually smart or choosy. It can be overwhelming, in which case, I have no advice except ‘keep going’, which is Antarctic comfort.
But if you’re in pain, why not try to push?
Take something you really want to do and do it. And every time the pain hits you, smile and do more.
You may fail. And the pain may not actually be sentient; it doesn’t understand ‘winning’ or ‘losing’.
But YOU can win. And that’s what matters.
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