pain and pleasure
(This was in my drafts, so in an effort to resuscitate the very dormant blog -)
My good friend said when we were in high scool, “You have to know pain to know pleasure”. (Reminds me of that Rhimes song, ‘all the pleasure is worth all the pain’) I wondered for a while if that was really true. I thought about it, and realized she was right. But I was basing that on my own experiences.
As a fortunate child, you are born into a happy family with parents who love and take care of you. The extent of your world is limited but not to you, your naive mind can’t fathom more or less – and your life is just right, just enough. Yes, you want more toys, you want more holidays – but it isn’t hard to feel joy. It’s that easy. No pain was necessary with your pleasure when you were an innocent.
I do not know anyone who lived past that stage and remained completely innocent. So, if there were someone like that, I’d love to know – are they able to feel pleasure not having being acquainted with pain? Probably, I mean, why the hell not? Why should lack, or an increased suffering, be the cause for better character? Of course I think that’s what we tell ourselves to make it have “purpose”. There is purpose in our pain. Otherwise, we would feel unbearable and life would be pointless to us. You’ve heard how these things “give you character”, which means when you were ignorant to life’s cruelty you were colourless (of course not). Isn’t it ironic that the more knowledge you have, the harder life seems? We weren’t taught that part, not that that would stop us from seeking knowledge any further. As humans we crave to know more but I do think that ignorance is indeed bliss. That’s why we were just simply happy as children. I read my diary of 11 years old – and the saddest thing that ever happened to me in that year was my mother’s refusal to allow me a kitten, which made me “so lonely, no one understands”. Sweet.
I was thinking of pain, and how when its over – when an initial hurt passes, there’s this feeling. Depending on the degree of pain, it could be either relief or a feeling of crazy triumph. There are some things that never stop hurting though, and of course this gives people the reason to ‘act out’ or ‘be assholes’ because they can – see, they’ve “suffered” and therefore have license to treat people like crap, and if you don’t understand that then you are a stupid fool who simply does not know enough. I do know this, pain makes people bitter and resentful, it makes us stick resolutely to grudges all the while acting like we’re better than ‘them’. We think age and the amount of things you’ve done is a good reflector on wisdom, our CV to gain us respect in this superficial world we live in. Be proud, be aggressive, be boastful, be vain – if you want to be ‘successful’.
So it is, when I hear the wise strength of a little boy who lost his entire family in a bomblast in Palestine, his strong belief in God, his hope. He has more wisdom than every other living person I know. He knows pain, yet he can see clearly our life’s purpose even whilst experiencing that pain. I don’t have that kind of belief or faith, and it reminds me of something I remember thinking when I was 15: adults are screwed up. Now I am one, one of the screwed up adults I didn’t like.
