We often think the opposite of pain is happiness. But what if it’s not? Is it the ability to get bored easily? What if the true opposite of pain is indifference, powering through, the inability to get overwhemled easily?
People in perennial pain (because of a traumatic/difficult life), when a good thing happens they become numb. They are so used to pain chemicals that good things don’t make their system jump.
They are shocked! What is this new chemical? All they know is that, this isn’t their usual friend pain. Hence, they are unable to process or express or experience their happiness as expected.
People who can experience happiness in its realest form are probably happy in general, healed in general. Pain is not normal to them, or let’s say it’s just one of the difficult feelings like anger, disappointment.
In fact, pain and disappointments don’t affect their system as much as they affect traumatised people.
Healed or unbroken happy people with sufficient emotional resilience can find happiness in anything and probably everywhere,everyday. They are those people who say they find happiness in small things.They are excited for anything and probably everything.
People with pain as their sidekick are the opposite. Even the grandest events make them feel ‘meh!’. They are unable to feel happy when what they desired for long happens, because of their otherwise chaotic life and nervous system.
They were not born like that, but today they have become like that.
Their nervous system is not normally attuned to safety and happiness, therefore, when it actually happens, they don’t know how to process it.
They are probably those people who are picking fights on the grand event day, because chaos is familiar, peace is not.
Happy people are able to calm down faster and do not get easily triggered. Even if they get triggered, their reaction is not as loud as people in pain, who are easily overwhelmed with minutest of things.
People in pain, they may or may not show it, but they are always looking for something to sulk about, that’s what their brain understands. Maybe this is how their brain is protecting them, making difficulties predictable.
The boredom that comes with a safe life is unbearable to people with pain. Unless they recognize it and do something to fix it, this is who they become, party-poopers and crybabies.
Pour some pain on me!
Life is full of difficult choices. Be it childhood or old age. Every age has its own set of problems and priorities. The key is to learn how to make healthy choices. And even if we do make mistakes, how to bounce back from them, not dwelling in them forever.
Nobody can promise a difficulty free, mistake free life.That’s not just how life works. But we can surely learn tricks to help ourselves and stand again after falling down, again and again.
Healing all the more becomes pertinent, because broken people look for a particular type of pain every time.
Everyone has a fixed drug in the form of pain, they would like to consume.
Some look for betrayal in everything, some are fixated with moral and ethical flaws. Some want to prove in their mind that every one is selfish, and some want life to prove that they will be abandoned.
For some, scarcity of money is always an issue. To some scarcity of love. The other is looking for scarcity of trust and inability to delegate. Some are unable to treat themselves as an individual and are waiting for others to look out for them.
Some people have made every relationship in their life someone else’s responsibility.
To some, life owes them everything. They think it is life’s job to offer them peace, happiness and health without having to work for it.
Some believe respect is not given at birth, but earned, even love, even as a child.
The list goes on.
The point is, as a person who is able to feel more than others and more frequently than others, the chances are it’s not going to change, at least not on its own.
If you think one day you will find your utopia, or the reason you are not finding your utopia is your bad luck or somebody’s fault, then this is the mirage you are chasing and living.
This balloon will not pop on its own! You have to pop it or let it go in the air with your own bare hands!
How to take this pain out of your system
To understand what life is, it is what we make it, how it looks, how it feels, everyday!
These are not just bumper stickers or words to be found in quote books, but it’s underneath the choices we make everyday.
Everytime you choose not to help someone, because you were betrayed by someone, you are writing a story of kindness and transactional relationships.
Every time you turn down meeting a friend, it is your choice of isolation. Every time you skip family dinner plans because you think it’s not worth it, only for a lazy reason or to look cool, it’s your choice to put your family away.
Every time you put off a self care activity, this is the story of how your overall self worth would look like.
Every time you give up a work opportunity, it’s your choice of employment. Every wellness meeting you are missing, it’s your choice of maintaining your health.
The point is life is happening, around us and to us all the time.
To think we get life exactly how we assume, is ignorance. Life is built through things, and to think we can control the choices is ignorance.
There is always an opportunity cost that you are paying. It is not about accepting anything and everything, it’s about being aware of what you are losing in the process.
It is not about right or wrong, it is how you want to achieve something.
A house is made brick by brick, it’s not there readymade, nor it should be. It’s better to design your life like you’d love to design your favourite dress (men included).
The point is not who is better or who is worse, the one in pain or one who is happy. It means, we shouldn’t think our personalities are natural and fixed, when it comes to it.
Our personalities are most likely conditioned and acquired. It is how the brain learnt to protect itself, how can we complain about it?
But, now that you are aware of it, and if you at all want to feel better, not saying you are not used to the pain, then give a chance to healing.
Make pain a foe in life, not a friend. Don’t get used to being in pain so much that you stop having problems with it.
There is a better life, right inside you, waiting to happen!
Choosing to be happy or be in pain is a powerful part of free will and being human, which other species don’t have.
Don’t let anyone else take the reins of your life.
So whatever you choose today, choose wisely!