There is much to be learned from pain. Especially physical pain. I would never say it warrants being sought out or needlessly extended but there is always a lesson in it. It makes for a good metaphor. And metaphors are the key to understanding the world, as well as ourselves.

I fractured my elbow recently in a fall from a bike. I got up to try to shake it off. Stay with it, I told myself as I made my way to the gym to clean up. Do you want you need to do in spite of it. The value of physical pain is that it is finite. It ends when the ailment ends. We can use this as an opportunity to push on through, with the safety net of knowing it will eventually be over. It is practice.

For every physical pain or ailment, there are a hundred emotional and metaphysical pains. Not just pains but conditions: anxiety, discomfort, fear, uncertainty, and failure. We may be scared to acknowledge these or have no faith that we can bear them. Our injuries, our broken bones, aches, flus, migraines, and diseases—the distresses that come, are dealt with in time and then go (thought they occasionally leave a lasting trail), they are proof that we have what it takes to reach inside and deal with the others. If you suffer from back pain it can cause you all kinds of stress so make sure you try neck cracking.

When you run and you get a blister. It hurts like hell for a minute—gets hot and pulsates, like an ember caught between the sock and the foot. If you’ve ever pushed through it, what happens is disgusting but wonderful at the same time. The skin bursts and the puss floods out, the body’s way of putting out the fire. The body, we forget, has all sorts of mechanisms designed to numb and treat pain. And so suddenly, it doesn’t hurt anymore.

Pain is a lesson in fortitude and also in self-awareness. In knowing our limits and our vulnerabilities. In a way it is a reminder that we are alive. Small or big, it prickles our senses and wakes them up—brings us back into the present, pulls us from our thoughts and to the physical. In many cases, it is a message that we are not in control.

What surprised me with my arm was that there was little sharp pain—sharp pain is easy to know what to do with. Take a pill. Clean a wound. See a doctor. But dull pain, dull pain is harder. We’re not as sure where to place it. Do we ignore and hope it will go away? Its what I did. All I felt was heaviness. Right up through the x-ray a few days later, I was sure it was nothing. Then it rose up and hit me in the room: I’m going to faint. I’m going to pass out right here from the pain in the middle of it all and promptly did.

We are not in control of pain. No matter how hard we try. Not of the cause or the duration—only the response. Through it we are given an opportunity to act our principles: justice, kindness, selflessness, moderation, self-direction. It offers the reminder that though pain is inevitable, suffering is not.

It’s funny because many of the toughest people shrink from facing these issues. Or are easily knocked around by it. They forget to stay with it, to push through, to do what they need to do in spite of it. Yet they face and endure the most trying physical calamities on a constant basis. This is to refuse to learn the lessons of pain. A failure to see what a calming, reassuring metaphor it is.

Welcome.

You’re probably here from my post on Tim’s site. A few words about this one. I don’t do the standard blog stuff. I use the second person a lot. You like that. I try to talk about the things that I wish blogs would talk about more often: life, dealing with assholes, how to be self-critical and self-aware, humility, philosophy, reading and strategy. And by those things I mean those things in a thoughtful and practical way, not seo-bait and bulleted list stuff.

Anyway, there is a core group of readers here and you’re welcome to join us. There is a monthly email of reading and book suggestions which can be signed up for here.

Some of my bigger posts:
The Narrative Fallacy (also see The Soundtrack of Your Life Delusion and The Second Act Fallacy)
Schemes and Scams
Read to Lead: How to Digest Books Above Your “Level”
Contemptuous Expressions
A False Sense
Stoicism 101: A Practical Guide for Entrepreneurs
The Experimental Life: An Introduction to Michel de Montaigne
Is This Who You Want to Be?
The Dress Suit Bribe

And finally, here is a small update on me…if you’re curious who I am exactly.

I have always felt pulled in two conflicting directions. It has not been pleasant. It’s made me feel miserable when I should feel happy, afraid when I should feel secure–a sort of constant tension and uncertainty that takes an exhausting toll.

There is the part of me drawn to discipline. To work and do great things in this brief bit of time I have been given. It is the force that keeps my nose in books and rarely allows my mind to waste a second. You could say that this is the part of me that people see and assume I am much older than I actually am, as they often have and do. This is the reason I’ve done the things I’ve been able to do while the rest of my generation is unemployed or deluding themselves. It is the side I indulge most.

There is another part of me pulled towards recklessness. To simply live. To hate the things that most people seem to value. To not want to be anything like them, to barely give a shit about what I’ve done and where I’ve been so far. To so seriously consider trading it in to do nothing ever again that it makes me want to cry. This is an urge that I do not understand.

I fear I won’t ever be able to. When I try to explore it, to see why I am drawn towards these things, the other side takes over. The few moves I’ve made in my life that could be considered daring or even reckless–dropping out of school, packing up and moving across the country–were almost immediately overwhelmed by the responsible side. The pureness and freedom almost instantly corrupted by the instinct to ‘turn it into to something.’

I remember once on this site feeling like I could write and write whatever I wanted, that there was no idea end to what I had to say. Slowly, certain self-applied standards began to encroach stylistically. No, that’s not good enough. Or no, that’s not the type of stuff I want to here. What felt like rigor was actually the gradual removal of options, to the point of partial paralysis.

And so it goes. Running becomes something that must be done every day. Books must be read. Contacts must be kept. Friendships must be turned into business relationships. Everything must be made into an opportunity, because opportunities can be turned into something. An opportunity to…

All this is to say that there is a tension in me that I have trouble grappling with. It is the feeling of living in a house divided against itself. Worse, given the irony of the disagreement being rooted in the same philosophic principals: to value only what is important, self-direction and freedom. And yet I think they are both equal parts fear, the fear of simply just being.

I do not know the solution here, or the answer. This is not meant to be advice. The person who watches as one side of them strangles the other, shunting it off to the side where its only remaining role is to impotently undermine their earnest accomplishments should not be giving advice. I only know that this is no way to live. Finding the balance here–easing the tension–will be the next steps for me. It will make my next moves clear. And between now and then will not be fun.