The Wisdom Of Pain

One of the biggest questions that people have in life is why there is so much suffering in this world. No matter whether you are a glass-half-full or half-empty person there are times when you are ambushed with this sense that pain inhabits its place too fully in life.

I heard on the radio today the brother of the pedestrian who was killed by the helicopter that crashed in Vauxhall. It was such a freak incident! Who would ever have expected when they woke up that morning that a helicopter would crash and kill them? I happen to be quite a worrier but I have to say that that one has never been on my list of things to be cautious about during a day. (Though maybe it will be now...)

The news is filled with hostages killed, kidnappings, murders and victimisation of the young or otherwise vulnerable. It is only human to ask, "Why?"

To some, I suppose, the answer lies in human choice. The helicopter pilot made mistakes and suffering was a consequence. I'm a firm believer in that answer and that it is us who have a duty to make the world more tolerable for the people around us. But sometimes, especially in the medical world, things "just happen" to people.

I'm not talking here about a person who eats too much and gets diabetes, cardiovascular problems etc or the smoker who gets lung cancer. Those things may well fall into the first category. (Not deserved; but consequential).

I'm talking about people who suffer pain. Real pain. They've lived life to the best of their ability, not overindulged, and still they get ill. Bad health hits people universally and at times it seems completely arbitrary.

Charcot Foot Disease is a result of  peripheral neuropathy in combination with a bone weakness. What happens is that as diabetes progresses (and is poorly controlled) the patient becomes less able to feel sensations in their feet - vibration sensation is the first to go and pretty soon the patient can't feel the foot at all.

Now, if the bones are prone to breaking and what I'm saying is that you won't be able to feel it- isn't that a good thing? Isn't that, infact, what we're looking for in this world? Wouldn't it be wonderful to have some way of totally numbing the pain that we feel when bad things happen to us?

When the foot loses sensation that's when the injuries begin. The broken bone is not felt so walking on it causes it to become more and more disfigured until you end up with something like this.

You see, the pain is a warning.

Sometimes, when I'm driving toward traffic lights in a morning and a few of them in a row decide to go to red the moment I approach I get annoyed. It's 'painful' - but it's a warning. It's a warning that something worse may come if I pass that line. I could crash and the consequences could be terrible not just for me but for someone else.

Pain is protective.

"But Harriet," you may ask, "how does that apply to horrible things that happen to people who are totally undeserving?"

My understanding of it is this: there is something at stake that we don't want to lose. Worse than physical pain would be the disfigurement we could find happening to our souls if we were numbed to it; if our world was cushioned. For some reason, we are stunted without the resistance that is in our lives as a result of struggles that we go through. It is better to walk around on a painful foot for a while than to have a foot we think is great until one day we see the distorting changes that have taken place over the pain-free years.