There is no creed that makes pain less painful

All that exists owes its life to all that is no more. Each passing moment is a martyr for the next, just as pain is our debt to joy. There’s no wisdom or faith that makes pain less painful. It must hurt if anything is to matter: your life depends on it.

So stop. Your sorrow chases you: turn toward it. Watch it catch up. It will not pounce and end you. You will not lose more than you already have.

Grief is your mother. Let her feed you, for grief is the food your soul was made to eat. It digests pain into life itself. Your soul knows how to break pain down into its parts, which are the same nutrients that combine to make purpose and awe and laughter. You don’t have to do anything, just as your stomach knows what to do with meat and potatoes. Turnips have birthed poetry — consciousness — war crimes — human drama. Pain birthed the chance at eking out a living at all.

Stop starving yourself. This hunger strike never prevented the bad things from happening, and your numbness slips into dissolution as you cease to exist.

So greet your sorrow. Make room for it at your table. Accept the dish it offers and break bread for you both.

Grief is here. Grief, your mother who loved you. Eat, weep, and see tomorrow. Nourished, you will survive; one day you will have enough strength to give as thanks.

How to Be in Pain

Let yourself hurt.

Explore it, know it, come to understand it, as if your pain was a soul unto itself.

Then sit softly with it, as would a friend. Offer no advice, only the hope that comes from companionship. For you are in pain, but you are not pain itself. Pain is Other.

The existence of you, in fact, offers hope to the creature called Pain.

Sit, breathe, and perceive the world with two minds — yours, and that of hurt. Distinguish both. Understand them separately.

Imagine you are a spirit guide to the soul of pain inside you. Speak softly, but urgently. Keep speaking to your pain, as you would hope your spirit guide would keep reaching out to you.

Sit with your pain and keep speaking.

Honouring Pain Through a Pretty Sorrow

I strongly believe that what kept me going through most of my life, until I finally came to a place of healing, was my experience of beautiful sadness. I carried deep sorrow and was able to honour it and make peace with it by finding it both exquisitely painful and exquisitely beautiful.

In this way I grew friendly with my sadness. I knew nothing of beautiful joy, and that pure happiness simply did not exist for me. But I was strong in my beautiful sorrow. It was not “dwelling on my pain”, nor was it “moping”. No, it was a deeper and more complicated thing than that.

I hardly thought of myself at all. Instead, I would obsess over the beautiful sadness of endings, and the idea that all journeys would come to a conclusion. I found myself crying over seagulls, who always seemed to be flying home. I watched Autumn leaves falling to the Earth and felt this piercing, but gorgeous, pain in my soul.

I have to tell you, at my worst I was not eating at all and as I grew thinner I expected to completely dissolve into the Universe. This was some years ago now and at the time I decided I would experience my last summer. I threw myself into the experience of finality and leaving. I watched sunsets and listened to music that made me ache. This was the only thing making me feel alive and making the depression bearable.

And after a time I realized that another summer was coming around. It was a gift instead of a burden. Even though I had not experienced the ending I was looking forward to, I still had my pretty sorrow to uphold me, and in time I needed it less.

Eventually some remarkable things happened in my life and I was able to put the beautiful sadness behind me and feel beautiful joy instead. But I will never look at my pretty sorrow as being the wrong perspective. It was all I had, and it gave me meaning and a kind of contentment amidst great pain.

So I would suggest trying to see the pretty sorrow in things, if you find yourself in a long dark night of the soul. Music and art and nature are full of this beauty. If you can connect with it, then you are not alone, for you have found some edge of Spirit to cling to.