Hardships & Pain

What comes to your mind when you read the word ‘pain’? Did you remember a movie line or did you remember your worst pain? If you said yes to the latter, what kind of pain was it?

Hardships are not just when it’s only slavery, imprisonment, poverty, etc, all that you’ve read about or watched movies that feature it. Of course, ‘external hardships’ seem the only real pain because they are more dramatic & cinematic.

However, internal hardships can be equal or even more hard and painful.

One is not poor just because he has less money. One may be considered to be in the worst poverty when one has lost all hope in life. When there’s not even one drop of hope left within, that’s when you are the poorest, that’s poverty!

And discrimination may not be evident as Blacks & White as in racism. Or as gender discrimination or by how you look.

People’s evaluation of a piece of work that has been created by an individual based on how many other people have viewed it and liked it or even based on ‘who’s offspring is that individual who has created this work’ is also a form of discrimination, don’t you think?

When you are in the system, and you want to escape, or when you want to lead through your work of mastery, but the system doesn’t let you, it tries to manipulate you to give up the excellence you’ve worked for. And there, you are indeed a slave, indeed imprisoned.

It is not just torturous when you are in a gas chamber. It is torturous when you are forced to drink mediocrity!

Ok, I’m not here to rant or ultimately to make you feel sad. Since now we have the same context on what hardships and pain are, I can continue to write further. And if you’re experiencing or have experienced an internal hardship recently, I want you to know I’m here for you. I’m all ears, pour out all the pain onto me, I understand your struggle was equivalent to fighting a war.

And by understanding that internal hardships can be equivalent or even more painful, we’ve got ourselves a practical tip, a virtue, a habit we can install in our lives: Install compassion towards all people around you. Acknowledging that, mental or psychological traumas can be highly painful, will give you the power to recognize and move to be there for someone who’s suffering from such hardships.

What makes hardships & pain?
It’s how we feel. Wait, I’m not saying ”you should choose to feel good or to be happy”. Yes, that is there, but not to avoid pain. That is when you’re done dealing with your pain. It is a hardship and painful because we’re not prepared, we are not comfortable, and we are unaware of something and the hardship & pain are your guides to moving towards knowing that you didn’t know, moving towards awareness.

Hardships are mere excuses, pain is the powerful catalyst ultimately trying to move you towards awareness. To move you from the dark to at least a glimpse of light. Even though it feels like the opposite, essentially, both hardships and pain are (maya) delusional, they are not real. But they are indeed a great tool if you acknowledge them as such. And this applies, especially to internal hardships.

Hardships are the initial ignitors, they are the situations that lead to you being in a highly uncomfortable state. Pain is the element that forces you to look into what the problem is. When you see it that way, you’ll realize how essential pain is. Without pain, we would altogether avoid trying to solve the problem.

Now, I’m not saying you should be grateful for the hardships as they arrive. No, instead you must face your hardships, feel the pain to understand from where it is originating, and understand what the universe is trying to teach you through them. And then, be grateful that you could move towards the light, and for the hardship and the pain that helped you do so.

In other words, do not assume or believe pain is good for the sake of it and keep living the same life. If there was a hardship and if there was pain, that clearly means your life got to change. Try to understand what that is and do something about that. It’s not gonna be easy, I’ll tell you. Sometimes it becomes very hard to decrypt what the universe is trying to say.

Overused words like “Hard work, work hard, or no pain no gain” has made us believe that hardships are good just for the sake of it. They’ve made us believe that ”working hard” or in other words, working in pain for something that is irrelevant and meaningless for years together is ok, or even good!

No. Pain isn’t good for you if you didn’t change. And if you’re experiencing the same pain over and over again, that means you didn’t grow and you are harming yourself. And as told in my Blog 69: The Biggest Problem to Humanity, it is not thinking enough that leads to such painful loops.

I hope through this blog, you got some notion of how one must view their hardships and pain as.

Thank You
Sanath Kumar Naibhi