At my local drugstore, the professional disembodied voice on the intercom exhorted me to get a flu shot (I would get a $10 gift card) and warned me that if I have had chicken pox (I have) or am over 62 (I'm not) I need the shingles vaccine. Then she told me about Excedrin Migraine. She sounded more upbeat and enthusiastic about Excedrin Migraine, and talked much longer about it than she did the flu shot or the shingles vaccine.
It was a little distracting. I had decided to go back to being a brunette, which is what I am naturally, and I was there to check out the hair color. I love to change up both my hair styles and my hair color, but it seems I am always happiest when I am a brunette. Not surprising, that being who I am makes me happy, right?
So there I am trying to decide on Medium Brown, Medium Golden Brown, Medium Auburn Brown, or Medium Caramel Brown. You can appreciate, I'm sure, the intense concentration required for this. And she is still talking about Excedrin Migraine, which can be found in the Pain Aisle. The Pain Aisle?! Maybe I heard wrong. Then she said it again. The Pain Aisle. I smiled and looked up at the signs, and in reality the aisle is marked Pain Relief. So it's the Pain Relief Aisle. That sounds better. Who wants to shop from the Pain Aisle? And then I felt a blog post coming on.
I have been extraordinarily blessed with excellent health, so my experiences with physical pain are rather limited. Emotional pain, now I have had some of that, although not as much as many people. But wasn't my pain incidental, something that happened to me because of nasty circumstances beyond my control or mean people? Or, could it be, that I have pushed my cart right up there and shopped from the Pain Aisle? Made some of my own choices?
It started me to thinking about relationships, and the times I have chosen to avoid the immediate pain of confrontation, which I hate. So I would keep my mouth shut, take the path of least resistance and go along to get along. In the short term, it did help me avoid pain. But in the long term? Oh my gosh. Ouch! It's ironic that I do things in the moment to help me avoid a little bit of pain, and then I hurt much worse and for much longer later. Not smart. I need to do something about that, don't you think? I need to stop shopping from the Pain Aisle of life.
Oh, and the hair color? Medium Golden Brown, in case you're wondering.
Susan
Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Sunday, May 6, 2012
The Power of Pain
"What we must do is turn pain into power. We must teach conflict resolution. We must not recycle pain." Jesse Jackson
Jackson marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., and I admire him for still going strong, not giving up hope that we can somehow work together to make America a different place for all people. His comments were quoted by Joe Piasecki and Adolfo Flores of The Pasadena Sun. Jackson was speaking at a local high school after the shooting death of an unarmed 19-year-old African-American man by the police.
My older son was military police when he spent eight years in the Air Force. He briefly kicked around the idea of becoming a police officer when he returned to civilian life, and I breathed a sigh of relief when he decided not to. Police work is scary. I respect those in law enforcement who put themself in harm's way to keep the peace, those who act with integrity. In the case of Kendric McDade, they did not.
All of us Americans need to feel the pain of the racial strife that continues on in our country, twenty years after Rodney King, almost fifty years after King told us that he had a dream. It's sad that we are still recycling all that pain.
At a personal level, chances are you have had someone recycle pain with you. They are having a bad day, it's nothing to do with you, but you feel some of their anger. Perhaps you've been in a relationship where the other person had some unresolved issues, and without meaning to, they made you hurt like they hurt. The recycling of pain. I once knew someone like this, and my sister made the insightful comment that "some people just need to have a dog to kick."
Pain is inevitable. We are all going to feel it at some point in life. Sometimes we are innocent victims, but even then we have a choice. What will we do with our pain? Will we recycle it by passing it on to other people, or will we turn it into power? It is always a choice.
Pain is powerful. It can bring us to our knees. It can cripple us, if we allow it. It can make us mean, so mean that we lash out at other people. We can nurse it all our lives, until we become bitter old people. Or we can decide to take it and turn it into power. Have you ever noticed that some of the best, kindest and most empathic people are those who know what it is to hurt? It's as if they have harnessed the power of pain and turned it into something healing, for themselves first, and then for those around them.
Susan
Jackson marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., and I admire him for still going strong, not giving up hope that we can somehow work together to make America a different place for all people. His comments were quoted by Joe Piasecki and Adolfo Flores of The Pasadena Sun. Jackson was speaking at a local high school after the shooting death of an unarmed 19-year-old African-American man by the police.
My older son was military police when he spent eight years in the Air Force. He briefly kicked around the idea of becoming a police officer when he returned to civilian life, and I breathed a sigh of relief when he decided not to. Police work is scary. I respect those in law enforcement who put themself in harm's way to keep the peace, those who act with integrity. In the case of Kendric McDade, they did not.
All of us Americans need to feel the pain of the racial strife that continues on in our country, twenty years after Rodney King, almost fifty years after King told us that he had a dream. It's sad that we are still recycling all that pain.
At a personal level, chances are you have had someone recycle pain with you. They are having a bad day, it's nothing to do with you, but you feel some of their anger. Perhaps you've been in a relationship where the other person had some unresolved issues, and without meaning to, they made you hurt like they hurt. The recycling of pain. I once knew someone like this, and my sister made the insightful comment that "some people just need to have a dog to kick."
Pain is inevitable. We are all going to feel it at some point in life. Sometimes we are innocent victims, but even then we have a choice. What will we do with our pain? Will we recycle it by passing it on to other people, or will we turn it into power? It is always a choice.
Pain is powerful. It can bring us to our knees. It can cripple us, if we allow it. It can make us mean, so mean that we lash out at other people. We can nurse it all our lives, until we become bitter old people. Or we can decide to take it and turn it into power. Have you ever noticed that some of the best, kindest and most empathic people are those who know what it is to hurt? It's as if they have harnessed the power of pain and turned it into something healing, for themselves first, and then for those around them.
Susan
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