What undue hardship this causes! As wonderful as the body is, we accept its imperfections, its susceptibility to disease and injury. But our brains, our minds, our spiritual dimension—how less well we understand these in their greater complexity! Is it so strange and unacceptable that they should be prone to their own problems, that they, too, may bring suffering?
Because society does not legitimate emotional pain, many people are not able to see their own pain as legitimate. So they deny it, to themselves and to others. But pain is usually a healthy signal; it tells you that something is wrong: Withdraw your hand from the fire! Move your cramping legs! Do something about your abusive, alcoholic husband! Get help for your depression!
Every one of these pains is a warning. To ignore all except those that are physical would be like saying that we are only bodies, without feelings, without humanity.
When you are in pain, whatever its source and kind, pay attention to it! Pain is often what points to a better life.
It is surely better to cope with a label applied in ignorance by some members of society, if this must be, than to live an unsatisfying and painful life. You must not manage your life just to avoid the potentially critical judgment of people who are ignorant of, or who refuse to acknowledge, the realities of human psychology. You can feel sure that among well-informed people, if you have had to deal with alcoholism, drug abuse, a difficult marriage, job depression, or any other "psychological" problem, you will be thought to be just as "respectable" as if you had coped with major surgery after an automobile accident. In fact, since overcoming a psychological difficulty demands a great deal more of your own voluntary effort, coming up a winner will increase your own self-respect and the respect, and even admiration, of those whose judgment is meaningful.
The first step to freedom from pain is to become aware of the walls of the prison that shut you in. Only then can you begin to
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PATHS TO HELP
To wrench anything out of its accustomed course takes energy, effort and pain. It does great violence to the existing pattern. Many people want change, both in the external world and in their own internal world, but they are unwilling to undergo the severe pain that must precede it.
Rivers in extremely cold climates freeze over in winter. In the spring, when they thaw, the sound of ice cracking is an incredibly violent sound. The more extensive and severe the freeze, the more thunderous the thaw. Yet, at the end of the cracking, breaking, violent period, the river is open, life-giving, life-carrying. No one says, "Let's not suffer the thaw; let's keep the freeze; everything is quiet now."
Mary E. Mebane, Mary, Wayfarer