One of the most difficult aspects of human existence involves dealing with pain. We learn early on that life is filled with accidents, illnesses, losses, betrayals, unredeemable choices, and missed connections with those we need and love the most. These poignant experiences intrude upon us, disrupting our plans, and confronting us with the terrible realization that living hurts, and that life is full of suffering. Learning that pain can debilitate us, we develop a natural desire to avoid any suffering, to practice denial of pain and make to make pain a problem.

Pain has a crucial role in survival

Our collective response to life's pain may well be determining the quality of the future of our children and our planet. Pain serves a crucial role in enhancing our chances for survival, because it galvanizes and focuses our attention and triggers our ability to respond. This happens at many levels—physical pain catalyzes a focus upon healing; while relationship pain stimulates growth and maturity. Similarly, pain accompanying the loss of community and the degradation of the environment provides vital information about the healing that is needed in our interactions with each other and nature.

The Problem of Avoiding Pain

We now live in a very dangerous situation. Modern society reinforces our attempts to avoid suffering. Pain is seen as an exclusively personal problem reflecting individual weakness and inadequacy. Pain (especially emotional pain) has become a source of shame that carries a social stigma reinforcing denial and secrecy. Capitalizing upon the unspoken hunger for relief that this secret pain generates, our economy provides an abundance of goods and services which we are sold on the basis that they will alleviate this hunger and the hidden anguish underlying it. These cultural practices succeed in temporarily enabling us to avoid feeling pain, but in doing so they override pain's survival value and perpetuate the circumstances and practices which cause that pain.

We ignore pain to survive modern society

Thus, we are able to deny the distress we feel as our sense of community erodes. We remain silent as we experience the anguish of witnessing the destruction of our natural environment. We deaden ourselves to these realities in order to endure. This is how we become pain (and depressed). The longer we resist what we know, but do not want to feel, the more persistent and dangerous becomes our situation.

We must experience the truth, and pain, to create a better tomorrow

Whatever hope exists for the creation of a better tomorrow resides in choosing to experience the truth—including the truth of suffering. This is how we become what cures pain—by opening to it and sharing what it teaches us. Pain reminds us of what we are connected to—the delicacy, vulnerability, and preciousness of life. It teaches us compassion and motivates us to pay attention to what really matters. Opening to our pain moves us to address the causes of our suffering and to free ourselves from them.

Pain can be a gift

Sharing life's pain is a gift we can give to each other, re-awakening our sense of connection with each other and our natural environment. In so doing we honor the truth of our circumstances, we learn from the messages our distress conveys, and we respond more accurately to what ails us. When we make a place in our lives for pain, we make a place where life can help us to survive.