During high school, I had two writing gigs.  I served as a high school / youth correspondent to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and I wrote and submitted essays to the Christian Board of Publications.  I had pieces appear in the newspaper and in a couple of youth magazines published by CBP.

One of my essays addressed “The Virtues of Pain”.  I argued that we needed pain in order to appreciate pleasure.  I had a fair amount of experience with what we now call “chronic pain” from toddler-hood.  By high school I had a standing prescription for Darvocet for the pain in my legs which at the time confounded the neurologists at Barnes Hospital.  The diagnosis they gave me was “hereditary spastic paraplegia”.

I knew my legs hurt and tried to make sense of it.  My instinct at the time drove me to see it as a contrast enabling me to appreciate some state of painlessness that I had never known but intellectually knew must exist. That pain took on a life of its own over the last forty-five years.  Eventually, the Darvocet prescriptions of my youth yielded to Percocet and Vicodin, which I alternated to minimize the effect of each on my bloodthinner’s efficacy.  By late fall of 2013, I had been regularly taking four pain pills daily  for quite some time, though I never exceeded the prescribed daily dose.

With a doctor’s care, I weaned myself from that pain mediction and now rely solely on my anti-spasmodic to take the edge off the pain which results from my spasticity.  The other sources of pain rage against me:  the aching joints, the ragged myelin, the chronic headache, the sensitive inner ears.  Sometimes I sit with my eyes closed and just tune into each pain site, meditating, willing myself to let go of my emotional reaction to the pain.

This morning I turned on the radio in time to hear the end of an interview on “mindfulness”.  I listened to the guest describe the concept of calming down and focussing on only the present moment.  I didn’t hear the whole story but I’ve done a little poking around on the NPR website and I believe that the speaker whom I heard was Jon Kabat-Zin.  I liked the concepts that I heard and will read more, perhaps listen to the podcast if I can find it for free.

A bit later, I opened the local paper to see a lead article about chronic pain.  I’ve skimmed it; I find it difficult to read word for word, I think because it cuts too close to the bone.  But one quote resonates with chilling familiarity: lawyer Mike Hockley, from the firm Spencer Fane, describes his self-dismissive replies when colleagues ask how he is: “Oh, just a little pain.”  I’ve used that line, though rarely with grace, as I am willing to bet Mr. Hockley employs.

And so I find myself ruminating on the virtues of pain and my response to it.  My neurologist approves of my decision not to use narcotics and charted, “Managing well with Metaxalone”.  I smiled spontaneously when I saw that.  He and I probably define “managing well” with radically different parameters.  But I’ve come full circle, in an unexpected way. I see the virtues of my pain as a  vehicle but not for appreciating a state of painlessness or pleasure.  Rather, I see my pain in all of its variants and nuances as an avenue for empathizing with the hardship of others.

I don’t mean to suggest that I will place myself like a peg on the continuum of pain.  Instead, when I hurt, in the dark of night when my defenses crumble, I can construct a kind of emotional body from which I can explore and understand the parameters of hardship, so that I might feel and understand hardship when I see it on the faces of those with whom I deal on a daily basis.  With such an understanding, I can employ different ways of responding to people, gentler perhaps, less harsh at least.  That’s been the goal of studying nonviolent communication, and this new realization of a ready-made tool for appreciating the burdens of others fits nicely into this fresh tapestry which I strive to weave for myself.

As for mindfulness and meditation, that’s part of what I’ve been doing these last seven months, part of my path to peace.  I’m molding myself into a more empathetic person as well as a person who experiences, but is not overwhelmed by, pain.  So my fifteen-year-old self had a good point, in advocating for the virtues of pain.  It’s taken this version of me a while to understand that point but I feel I’m on the right path now and I’ll keep on walking that path.   Every day of my life.  Every blessed day.