A Note on Pain.

There used to be a commonly used cliché where I come from, which ran: ‘You’ve got more guts than gumption.’ For those who don’t know, the word ‘gumption’ simply means common sense, and so the statement is a kind of backhanded compliment.

Somebody said it to me once when I was around twelve or thirteen because he’d noticed that I was able to tolerate physical pain without complaint or response of any kind. And it was true; I could.

I’d developed a technique, you see, of separating the neurological response from the psychological one. In effect, my consciousness somehow stood apart from my physical body so that I could observe the phenomenon without being seen to react to it. It’s a skill I’ve lost as I’ve grown older.

I’ve been the unwilling recipient of quite a lot of physical pain over the past 3½ years, occasioned by a number of different circumstantial triggers, and now I react with the more usual squirming, screwed up eyes, and a variety of vocal emanations. (I suppose it means I’ve become a wimp, but should I care?)

But I’ve realised that it isn’t only the physical discomfort that troubles me. It’s also the sense that pain is often an indicator that something is broken, or is at least perceived as such. And what do we do with broken things? We call them worthless and throw them away. And since pain often restricts – or forbids altogether – certain actions or activities, it really does make us, at least partially, worthless and fit only to be thrown away. And I don’t like that.

(I suspect that this post is hopelessly incoherent. I choose to blame the pain in my injured arm which is making it difficult – and painful – to do almost anything with my right hand, including the typing of this post.)