What Pain Teaches
What being in pain tells me is that:
I cannot live in the past because I mourn that person who no longer exists.I cannot live in the future because that person may not be.
Or I am scared of finding out who that person might be.
My body only lives in the present.
My emotions in the NOW.
In some ways, pain reminds me that NOW is the greatest expression of life I have.
Even though it feels like the worst time in my life at the same time.
Yet,
This pain readies and prepares us to do the one thing we have failed to do.
Appreciate life and the living of it.
By being in the now I feel everything.
The good, bad, high, low.
I appreciate the ticks of the clock and the very next breath.
I experience everything RAW.
But then, that also includes the good emotions.
Raw love.
Raw hope.
Raw peace.
In the depths of my darkness I leap for joy in the smallest of the lights.
I see each act of life, even in pain, a moment of possibility and hope.
Why, because I can take that next breath.
I feel the next heartbeat.
I am both the sufferer and the healer at that moment.
But more.
I am not alone in the Now.
Even the accompaniment of pain is accompaniment.
But there is still more.
If I am experiencing everything RAW the filters are down.
Real connections happen because I have not the energy
nor focus to prevent those connections.
And I realize that we all reside in the RAW NOW.
Everyone.
And in that, with connections, in accompaniment,
we share this truth of life.
We are not alone.
And therefore, there is hope.
