Probably one of the funny things about pain--which, let's be honest, there just aren't that many funny things about pain, and this might not exactly qualify as humorous--is that even studying risks invoking it. It reminds me of that old medieval sense that invoking a name might summon something terrible, as if talking about pain might somehow summon it.
My sister and I were speaking of accustoming our hands to pain for the sake of cooking and making candy--for her, that's a far more immediate and economic concern, but we were speaking about how we have to undo years of training to learn to cook. "It's hot--don't touch!" has to give way to hot but able to be handled. Pain has to faced, prepared for, in the course of being able to something well.
One of the most helpful things I have ever learned is that pain and suffering are different. Pain is immediate--it can be psychological or physical or perhaps even spiritual, but it hurts. It's the sensation of something wrong. Which is why pain can be so frustrating--like phantom pain, that pain that people who have lost a limb feel from a non-existent body-part. Pain is supposed to tell us something is wrong, but sometimes we're inclined to say, "Thanks! I got it! No need to remind me!"
Suffering, though, is what I want to reflect on for a moment, because I've been wondering about something. I learned once that "suffering is pain we feel at our own limitation." That's why, for example, some people suffer much while confined to a hospital bed, and others much less so, because the second group finds different ways to accept the limitation. Elsewhere, recently, someone suggested to me that "suffering is the pain we feel between what we imagine/want and what is." It seems to me that those definitions are interestingly different.
It's funny that the pop-conception of legalese is that we can sue someone for "pain and suffering," when, if either of these definitions is correct, pain might be the fault of the perpetrator, but suffering is as much the fault of the one suing.
Clearly, the two definitions are related--but I wonder, which is true? Is the pain we call suffering because of our limitations, or because of what we imagine? If the latter is true, the pain we call suffering is eradicable. If the former, some kind of suffering is inevitable. It makes me think of Jesus on the cross and the poem in Philippians 2--by choosing to be limited as human is limited, Jesus truly suffered the pain of those limitations.
Can we escape all suffering? I'm simply not sure. Certainly how we respond to our limitations affects--or quite possibility effects--our suffering. But maybe the more important lesson is that, while suffering can be eased and it's not clear to what extent, pain sometimes is simply part of our experience.
Maybe confectionery has more to teach us than simply avoid sweets.
