Pain: the universe don't give a shit
Thursday, May 24, 2012 at 11:37AM 
This is my low back, one week post-surgery, the little button-hole incision healing up just right. Two things are funny about this for me: 1) that the new incision is exactly where the old scar from this surgery #1 13 years ago was, maybe they should just install a zipper; 2) that I can't wash off the X, and oh I've tried, that Dr Lavery drew on my hip before the procedure. X marks the spot.
Funny.
What isn't funny, when I think back on it, is how much pain I was in for so long. I wrote about pain earlier, about how I only endorse two kinds of pain -- childbirth and heartache. All other pain is bullshit.
Physical pain teaches us nothing.
And it ain't the universe's way of telling us, or teaching us, jack-shit.
You know how there are those people who think everything that happens is the universe trying to communicate some message to you? Like when Joe had that bad bike accident -- no, not the one in the race where he broke his humerus, and no, not the one when the deer jumped in front of him, totalled his biked and jacked him up for weeks, not those, but the one where the guy inexplicably turned left right in front of him and Joe landed in the hospital for four days with four broken ribs, a punctured lung, broken scapula and clavicle, that one -- and people, people wanting to be helpful, would say things like, "Maybe this is the universe telling Joe that he needs to hang up the bike. Maybe the lesson here is that he's too old for this and needs to take up something mellower." I knew people were moving through their own personal reactions and trying to be helpful, so I bit back on my response and never told them what the Universe was whispering in my ear at that moment:
Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
Well, of course I didn't say that, that would have been RUDE. And I know that sometimes I might think it's the Universe talking, but really it's just me giving myself permission to voice my own opinion disguised as the so-called wisdom of the cosmos. Hah, cosmos/me: I call bullshit on that.
I know I've done it, too. It's easy. It's what happens when we have trouble dealing with Lila, that philosophical idea that Shit Just Happens randomly. It doesn't happen for a reason. It just happens. What happens for a reason is what you choose to do afterward. The fun part is what we choose to do afterward -- that's where the lesson is and it's one we teach ourselves. No great big Universe or God or Spirit or whatever showing us the way.
Nope, it's just us. Just you and what you make of what happens to you,
just me and what I make of what happens to me.
So from my back injury and all those months of pain and now this delectable 6 weeks of recovery time, this is what I choose. This is what I make of it.
One. A strong healthy happy body, a beautiful life, is my first duty to myself and to others.
Two: Living with pain when you have a choice not to be in pain is INSANE, literally. Choosing to live with the limitation of constant pain is something that I can only understand as a fear and rejection of life itself. And if there's anything I know, anything I've learned from this and every other experience I've ever had, living, really living, is why we're here.
If you get hurt, if you're in pain, it isn't the so-called Universe telling you anything at all. The Universe is silent. The Universe, like Honey Badger, don't give a shit.
All that matters is what you choose. Do you choose life -- will you do whatever it takes to claw your way back to health, to strength, to beauty, to happiness -- or do you choose pain? It's a choice. It's your choice.
Make it.
Reader Comments (2)
The phrase "when you have a choice" is huge here, Ariane. I totally agree with you about the insanity of choosing to live with it, thinking that there is some cosmic lesson. However, when choice is off the table, and it is what it is, the lesson is not cosmic, but very real. The lesson comes with the knowledge that giving oneself over to it, and accepting being "a person in pain" as one's identity is choosing to start being dead while we still have life.
After 19 surgical procedures, 4 bouts with epidurals, 2 with facet injections, and 18 years of acupuncture, massage, herbs, physical therapy, Iyengar, Chi Gong, etc. my pain has become a rising and falling motivator. "Shut the fuck up" has come from my lips more times than I could count, and "let's just get rolling," easily as many.
We just have to remember that as soon as we begin focusing on the pain, rather than the life in front of us, we just stop. And just stopping (growth, learning, Being, etc.) is death before its time.
Well, shit happens, you just have to roll with the punches and never lose your sense of humor which is the best companion through anything medical. I agree there's no lesson other than making the fastest decision to do the best procedure to end the pain as quickly as possible; pain is no joke, with pain there is no room for mumble jumble phylosophies. I wonder though about the area where your pain is located, lower back huh...? which vertebrae is this...? I want to look it up in one of my books. Great doc by the way, you have a tiny mark. Now be a good girl and rest all you can. Many kisses *-* Elsa