An Anthology of Pain

What is pain ?

The online dictionary defines it as "An unpleasant sensation occurring in varying degrees of severity as a consequence of injury, disease, or emotional disorder". However, I am sure this definition is not exhaustive, for several times you feel the pain despite not being afflicted by injury, disease or emotional disorder.

Probably, its easier to define it relative to pleasure. We do need to be careful here, though, because absence of pleasure does not automatically mean presence of pain. There is an intermediate stage of tranquility too, squeaky white in color, when you feel neither too elated nor dejected.


However, the question we set out to answer was pain, its identity, its genesis and if possible, a cure.

We may start with a working definition of pain as the uncomfortable emotional response to external and/or internal stimuli. The key is emotion level response because we have seen people not feeling pain when their physical condition would require them to, simply because their emotion level response dictated something else. How else would we explain people dying for the other person, sacrificng their pleasures, comfort and even lives for others. By extension, we may say that you feel pain when you want to and in that sense, pain becomes kind of self inflicted.

That's what Victor Frankl states in his, "Man's Search for Meaning". That's what a lot of writers and wise men state that in any given condition, a man is free to choose his response to his circumstances. This is important because this is our only hope too. Whoever thought he could always control his circumstances was probably hallucinating, or God Himself.

However, this doesn't cover all that is to pain. Another significant characteristic of pain is that it is transient. You may feel extreme despair at having been away from your loved one for too long but the very next moment, you may feel the warmth of her touch when you will ever meet her. The key probably is the hope for resolution in future, but even hope is relative. One person's hope may be another's despair. The focal point however, is hope because survival instinct of humans is such that as long as there is some hope, we pretty much endure all that the circumstances throw at us.

Yet another intriguing characteristic of pain is that expression, in some ways, soothes it. The circumstances may not have changed but just the fact that you have been somehow able to express it, whittles away at least some of the intensity. The mode of expression may vary widely, at times you may confide in a confidante, at times you may converse with your God or at times, it may come out as a couplet. That probably is why the best poetry comes out of a sad heart. It actually is expressed very beautifully in the following verse:

"Viyogi hoga pahla kavi, aah se upjaa hoga gaan,
nikal kar aankhon se chupchaap, bahi hogi kavita anjaan"

(The first poet would have been one, separated from his lover and his silent tears would have formed the first verse)

Pain is, as long as life is. You can't decide your situation but you can decide your response which means you are free to decide how much pain you have to feel. Also, expression is the primary means of taking the pain out of pain.

As a final word, therefore, make sure you either have some very good friends or you are a poet.