We are so quick to numb pain. In all its forms: with a pill, a song, a high, anything to make the discomfort stop before we have to deal with the cause. Be it physical or metaphysical, it’s a universal concept. We experience pain alerting us to an imbalance, a problem, a dangerous external stimulus causing harm that needs addressing. Allowing pain to manifest, to run its course, to tell its story is essential… if it’s bearable.

Do we need to know its story, to feel the naturality of this sensation to know how to sustainably remedy the problem? Isn’t that the reason the human being was blessed with nerve endings, to identify and escape danger before it causes permanent harm?

The anticipatory nature of pain is true of pain associated with the mind, soul, emotional realm, and spirituality; the entire human condition. Pain is a holistic entity that permeates the metaphysical sphere to cause physical, almost tangible pain from an intangible experience. That’s why your heart sinks to the very floor you walk on when you think you might have lost your little boy. Or when you fleetingly imagine losing a loved one. Or that physical feeling of someone punching you in the stomach when you do lose a loved one, or when they are hurt. Or even the very thought of a family member being hurt. It manifests in physical, tangible pain. Why? Because of the inextricable link. Because what you think, feel and do are part of who you are.

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Your body is a tangible manifestation of so much more than your organs. So elusive versions of pain: Depression, mental fatigue, Psychosis. Are these not but enigmatic forms of pain? Of a psyche so distraught, so embedded in an emotional confusion that it decides not to deal. It decides it can no longer function at its true potential. Does it get to this point because of numbing the early warning signs of pain? Until that which is suppressed bubbles to the surface in a new, distorted way?

So why do we numb before we fix? In a society where pain is such an intrinsically bad thing, painkillers are popped, drugs are ingested, easy, quick, instant gratification dopamine releasers are at our fingertips; distracting us from our reality.

We always want to feel better without making ourselves better. It’s our human nature. We are scared, fearful of… anything that means we have to work hard, change, accept responsibility. Proverbially anaesthetising our faults with distractions, with busyness, consistently doing and not stopping to think. To reflect. But why do we do this? Why is human nature so fearful of its Self? It’s uncomfortable. Of course, we don’t like being uncomfortable. Is the need to feel good all the time becoming a misguided addiction?

What if society became comfortable with being uncomfortable. What if we embraced challenges as a natural pathway to a more honest, humble sense of Self? Perhaps we need to redefine happiness for ourselves. Is happiness that ephemeral ego-boost we get from entrenched social media unconsciousness, from the trivial pursuit of glee? Or is happiness contentment. Peace of mind, peace of soul, of spirit. A metaphysical acceptance of imperfection. A product of periodic reflection.

What if our pain-paradigm shifted from problem to opportunity, from utterly scary to positively hopeful? For are not the two fundamental notions that drive all human emotion underlined by either hope or fear? You can either let fear hold you back or be propelled by hope. Hope has always been the driving force for all that is good, all of success, in the true meaning of the word, and all that has changed the world for the better. So if we simply look at pain in a new, different light; can it not hold in its midst a world of opportunity? After all, that’s how diamonds are made: from years of pressure.