pain

Describing pain was so simple when we were all kids. Dito, masakit, nadaganan. Doon, mahapdi, nagasgas. Most of the time they're self inflicted. They heal in a few days, and sometimes a slight blow of wind helps alleviate what you feel. When they ask how painful it is, you just say that it is painful and that's it. no further questions. It heals, and we move on the next day.



As doctors, it's not enough that you just say it's painful. You ask when did it start? how did it progress? is acute or chronic? what kind of pain is it? are there any accompanying symptoms? does it radiate to other body parts? does it affect daily living? did you seek consult? did you take or do anything to relieve it? were you compliant? were you relieved? did it recur?



But then again, one does not have to become a doctor to complicate pain. One only has to grow up. And the worst kinds of pain are not the ones from trauma, not even the physical pain, but the one brought by the heart and then your psyche puts it on a loop of a vicious cycle.



Pain. It's not enough to say it's just painful. You have to rationalize why. Derive where it started at how the pain got into your attention. How did it progress? is it acute, or are you martyr enough to make it chronic? what kind of pain is it? does it come with breathlessness and unproductivity? does it get you? does it radiate to different parts of you? does it radiate to different people? does it affect daily living? did you seek consult? are are you stubborn enough to sleep it through? did you cry? did you shout? did you punch something, or someone to relieve it? did it recur?



When we were young, Pain was just simple. it just aches, and sometimes band-aids just do the trick. It all got so complicated, because we all grew up. Maybe the only thing similar about it is that most pains are self-inflicted. We overthink what was once simple, or people around complicates it. We wake our inner sadist to inflict Pain. It all got so different. But somehow, we have to grow up from the era of band aids. We have to feel worse pains so that we'd find a way for better releif. We then appreciate the wonders of antibiotics and anesthetics and therapies, or even the simple process of wound healing. From pain, we needed to grow up. We have to. Pain gets complicated just as Relationships get complicated, Money gets complicated, Time gets complicated, We get complicated, Life gets complicated. It's all part of being a rational human being. Somewhere along the way, we got used to the simple pain when we were young that we subconsciously asked for a worse dose. One that would make us grow, one that we get forced to grow, some leave scars, and some leave marks, some parts of us die because of it, some become better. And the next thing we know, we have higher pain tolerance, we get better at evading, we laugh at what we once cried on. The next thing we know, pain brought us to a better place.



Maybe pain isn't bad at all. Maybe pain is good.

All we have to do is be aware that we're in the proccess of pain-heal-better cycle that makes us better people



Why do we keep on hitting our head with a hammer? because it feels so good when we stop.