The Pain of Living

“Pain and death are part of life. To reject them is to reject life itself.”

                                                                           -Havelock Ellis

A major challenge of adulthood comes with learning to accept pain, death, and loss as realities in life. Historically, developmental psychologists have suggested that this is something we accomplish later in life...like clockwork, just after the career has been established, the kids have grown up, the mortgage has been paid, and the mobile home has been purchased. Our modern culture seems only to reinforce this delayed engagement by convincing us that there are pills to cure all manner of pain, surgeries to counter aging, and shiny new gadgets to distract one's mind from any thoughts of death that might creep in.

In my own life, I have experienced the opposite extreme. For better or worse, life forced me to accept pain and death at a very early age. And no amount of pharmaceuticals or shopping sprees was going to change that. When I was 24 years old, my lung collapsed spontaneously in the night as I slept (it's called a spontaneous pneumothorax and for anyone interested in seeing the anxiety it causes, check out the facebook group for those who have been through it). After waking up early in the morning unable to breathe, I was rushed to the emergency room, stuck with needles and tubes, cut open and operated on, and then spit back out into the world after 14 days in a hospital bed. Throughout this ordeal, I allowed myself to cry on one occasion. The day after I had undergone the surgery that permanently fused my lung with my chest cavity, I let out about 60 seconds of tears, full of suffering and frustration. That is, until my surgeon entered the room with a look that seemed to say ‘Please stop that. I really can't deal with your emotions right now.’ And so I gathered myself, and returned all of that pain and fear and weakness to a place where others could not see it. And as I returned to my life outside of the hospital, I continued to learn that it was best not to burden others with my pain. I did my best to keep on acting like a “normal” twenty something, one who was healthy and strong and confident. And I suppose that my strategy worked on a certain level. I managed to accomplish some things in a timely progression...receive an education, become what I hope is a competent social worker, develop meaningful relationships, become a father. And yet, throughout those years, I was living with severe, chronic pain.

In the years since my surgery, I’ve felt it all. Sharp pains that originate at my sternum and slice all the way through my body to my back. Dull aches in my shoulders, neck and back that won’t go away. Migraines in every part of my head. Intense pain in my left eye that makes me have to turn out the lights and lie down. Metallic tastes in my mouth. A ringing in my ears. Pains in my jaw and my cheeks. Odd internal sensations that wake me in the middle of the night afraid that I'm going to die. Inconsistent eating and sleeping. Hot flashes. Fatigue. Anxiety. Depression. Irritability. Terror. And when a person experiences this sort of pain, it is the only thing there is. All of those other things going on in one's life - the work days, the classes, the social gatherings - are like the scenes in a movie. You watch them and try your best to be a part of them so that people don’t think you’re a total loser or an asshole. And then you wait for the time when things will be quiet and uneventful again so that you can relax your body and not have to think or interact.

Luckily for me, there has been a path to recovery. It took some good practitioners - a doctor, a physical therapist, a massage therapist, and a chiropractor - to help me understand the specific problem (the twisted mess that my spine had become after years of improper breathing and posture since my surgery) and the solution (painful massage of the neck, arm and chest muscles and gentle strengthening of the back and shoulder blade muscles). I am now on the way to physical recovery. With each passing day, my body is getting stronger and the pain is decreasing. I am beginning to remember how I felt before this all started.

So, as a sort of twist on the traditional notion of development, at 35 years old, I find myself already acquainted with much of life's darkness. I’ve been living in pain and staring at death for the past 10 years. And now, as I’m slowly awakening from the suffering, my developmental step has actually become to get back some of what the pain has stolen from me, which is to say the ‘enjoyment’ and the ‘living’ parts of life. And, it seems to me that Havelock Ellis' words do hold true. That, in having gained an acceptance of death, and an experience of pain, that I will find living to be better than it ever was before.

And, in keeping with the academic bend of this blog, I'd like to propose a new component for my model of adult development. Because, it seems to me that my experiences with pain - past, present, and future - will continue to present me with significant emotional challenges, which I can respond to in both healthy and destructive ways. And in this I'm not alone. As we enter adulthood, we all become increasingly aware of that dark cloud hanging over our lives. But we're sort of left up to our own devices regarding how much we allow our "death awareness" to surface, and how, when it does surface, we make sense of it. Finding the right balance, then, is the challenge of adulthood. If one avoids the issue, one fails to develop the sort of emotional depth that comes with embracing the "darker" parts of life; heartache, grief, sadness, weakness, struggle. And in neglecting to devote attention to the subject, one also fails to develop an acceptable explanation for the existence of death and suffering. Furthermore, when a society teaches its people that, with careful planning, pain and death can be avoided, you get modern-day America, where we struggle to feel empathy and compassion for others in pain. Too much pain and death, on the other hand, and a person becomes incapacitated by darkness, not to mention irritable, pessimistic, and depressed. So where does the correct balance lie? While I would never propose to have an answer for that question, I do think that Erikson was onto something when he proposed his own developmental steps as conflicts (x vs. y). So I'm going to propose this one in much the same terms....

Death Preoccupation vs. Death Denial

As adults we must resolve ourselves to understanding that pain and death are essential parts of life. When we fail to accept the existence of death and pain in a way that is satisfactory to our own thinking, we are unable to process tragedy and loss. We get stuck with questions like 'why do bad things happen to good people?' and 'why me?' We also fail to develop the emotional depth needed to connect with others who are experiencing difficulties in life. Too much of a focus on death, on the other hand, leads one to develop a dismal outlook and to "miss out" on the lighter side of life. The goal of the modern adult must be to integrate an awareness of death into one's thoughts, emotions, and actions in a way that supports healthy development and affirms life.

That's all for now. In the future, I plan to write about other conflicts we face in adulthood, and eventually integrate these conflicts into a cohesive model of adult development.