Last update: February 06, 2017
Everything we do has a double purpose: to live it for better or for worse, until it overwhelms us, and to learn from what we have gained from that experience. This is why learning can always be considered a gift, even if pain is our teacher.
We always learn from what marks us, what surprises us and what catches our attention enough to steal some of our time. If this were not the case, in fact, we would soon forget it, without holding back the cheerful memories or the morals of the most difficult moments.
Pain as a teacher
Usually the pain comes with the same force with which, a moment before, happiness had come. That happiness has often been triggered by the same cause that now inflicts pain on us. In this way, pain comes after happiness, with stories that end, lives that separate, diseases that imprison us ...
"There is as much wisdom in pain as there is in pleasure: both are the two great conservative forces of the species."
-F. W. Nietzsche-
Rightly, and as we have already said, pain is a teacher of life, because behind it there is always the certainty that it was worth it: it is the antechamber of a new happiness in which we will value, understand and take better care of what we possess.
Learning is always a gift, even if we do it starting from a pain that seems to be infinite and unbearable. It is a gift because it helps us to become better people and makes us aware of the fact that, after reaching the top of our goals, we have to go back down to find new ones.
Learn from pain and avoid suffering
In addition to what we have already said, learning from pain means understanding that there is a big difference between the involuntary sensation triggered by something or someone that hurts us and allowing that sensation to grow over time, to become suffering.
"This is how a wound is treated: it begins to close by itself, to protect what hurts so much and, once closed, we no longer see what was underneath, what was hurting so much".
-Amy Tan-
In other words, it has often been said, and rightly so, that pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice. Pain is useful, because it helps us to face new realities and to be stronger. Suffering, on the other hand, is useless: you need to get away from it, heal your emotions and move on.
Setting pain limits is a necessary behavior: establish the point at which pain stops being inevitable in order to be able to start looking forward again. When the "why does this happen to me?" its time has passed, the time has come to forget the possible answers and learn that some things just happen.
Learn that there can be a before and after of pain
The pain can be so profound that learning from it involves a huge change in our inner selves: it is the shocks received that mark our individual existence and remind us that there can be a before and an after around them.
Before it arrived, we didn't expect it, but when it ends, it is now part of us. The pain remains there, now in the form of a life experience and a useful tool for embarking on new adventures: because life is an adventure that needs great successes and one of the greatest results that can be obtained is to understand pain and learn. From it.
Certainly, pain is a teacher because, thanks to it, we can see the weight of a before and the importance of an after: we leave it just like someone who, upon entering a smoke tunnel, feels disoriented and does not know where to go, but when he comes out and sees clearly again, he really feels alive.
“When the storm is over, you probably won't even know how you got through it and made it out alive. In fact, you won't even be sure if it's really over. But there is no doubt about one point. And it is that you, having come out of that wind, will not be the same one who entered it ”.
-Murakami-
In this way, we feel ourselves when we learn from pain and, once past, we realize all that we are and that we did not know we were, we observe what was there and we did not see and we understand that pain teaches us to look back, but only to take the necessary push to move forward.
