Pain

As my Sifu was fond of saying, “Pain is good, it let's you know you are alive. It is only when it doesn't hurt anymore that you need to worry.

Only the dead feel no pain.”

Pain is a fact of existence. Like hot, cold, day or night.

Gravity, time, entropy, hot, cold, day, night, pain, are absolutely impersonal.

Pain is a sensation, not a judge.

It's not about deserving the pain in life.

What it is about, is not allowing the pain to define you.

Figuring out that You, define you, not others, not circumstances. You and you alone.

You actually hold the freedom and power to choose, who you are.

No one else does, nothing else does.

The people that hurt you, don't define you. The landslide that rolled down the mountain and crushed you, doesn't define you.

What you choose, how you choose to respond, defines you.

That said,

Yes it fucking hurts. The pain gets to be incredibly insane.

( I know a little about unending pain, Syringomyelia.)

To me, the trick is Love and blatant defiance.

I don't think we, any of us, know how to love until our heart has been broken.

I believe we all have savage hearts.

Savage hearts that imprison our love, and savage hearts that resist love.

Only when it's broken can love escape, or can love get in.

That savagery has a purpose;

The savagery gives you the strength to overcome, to rise up, to survive and defy the breaking.

The savagery gives you the courage to love.

So,

Be savage, be defiant, be brave,

Live, and in living love.

When that is your focus, you won't notice the pain.