The Circle of... Pain

[‘Man’, ‘He’, ‘Him’ words in this piece should not be looked at, as gender-specific]

"Nobody has had it easy in life."

I’ve come to believe that, over the years. Yes, some people have to ride against the tide much more often than the others. And some of the rival tides carry the might of a cyclone behind them… It feels from the look of it that life has perhaps been the most unfair on these few. Perhaps, it has too. But then, were it not for the adversity, the Heroes would never have been called so.

Heroes have special powers. And the most important of those powers are their own oppositions, their own hardships. Not everybody is a Hero, because well, not everybody gets to be conditioned by mammoth problems.

This, however, does not mean that the so-called (and believed to be) ordinary man doesn’t have a taste of real problems. For most people, their ‘ordinary’ problems are extraordinary, because whatever said and done, at any given point in time, one man’s problem is unique to him, and he’s the only one fighting it, even if millions before him have seen, faced and dealt with exactly the same crisis.

Heartbreak may seem an extremely mundane and passé reason for swollen eyes to some people, while these very people would probably shut themselves into darkness over the loss of a pet. Actually, other things being constant, pain is as small or as big as the lack of familiarity with it. It works like antibodies – like one of those immunization injections – which build a protective wall inside you, a wall against any afflictions by similar sources of pain attacking yet again. But well, if the source of pain is a new one… Boom! There goes the Wall! And then, starts the process of the buildup of a new defense mechanism. A new thing or two are learnt, and the Wall is repaired to face the storms yet again.

Every storm is unique, which is why every wall is unique. Resilience is built up as and when new storms loom large on the skies. But to say that a certain Wall, as it exists today, has not been through the worst possible or hasn’t endured as much as its ability is, would be a little unfair.

Nobody can get into another person’s shoes. Yet, in every way, one must have a heart big enough to accommodate those dealing with seemingly trivial problems. Looking down upon them as trite is tad insensitive.

After all, Pain and the Ability to Bear It – come in a circle. You may never know which came before the other, but they must always coexist. If the Ability exists but Pain doesn’t, then there’s no way to prove the existence of the former at all. If the Pain exists and the Ability doesn’t, well, it becomes a question of existence then. And the choice one makes in that one moment is actually the only choice available to them. To create the Ability, to complete… the Circle of Pain.