The Mutual Relationship Between Joy & Pain
Pain: noun, physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury
Joy: noun, a feeling of great pleasure and happiness
Pain becomes an inevitable experience in life. No one is free from evil’s grasp and its repercussions on fragile souls. Physical pain is the most tangible form—scrapes on our knees from playing too rough as a child, bruises from running into corners, and headaches from indulging in the night before. Physical pain makes sense. It’s our body’s way of telling us that something has gone wrong, and the experience of palpable discomfort follows. We can deal with this pain because we can see this pain.
The experience of pain we cannot see or touch becomes the most intolerable. Psychological pain—the type of pain that exists within the bounds of our intellectual hemisphere—becomes the most confining. This pain becomes so excruciatingly obvious to the individual mind that it manifests itself in bodily reactions as a means of expression. Tears become the expression of sadness, yelling becomes the expression of anger, and silence becomes the expression of capitulation. Both physical and psychological pain become something that we avoid on a daily basis. Why? Because it’s uncomfortable to experience raw pain. We perpetually walk a line trying to avoid things that make us physically or psychologically strained—we see pain as the absence of joy.
Joy, too, becomes an inevitable experience in life. The body reacts emphatically to stimuli created by external forces perceived as pleasing to us. Jaws unclench, shoulders relax, and breathing comes back to a homeostatic state of peace. Joy becomes difficult to hide, so we willingly express through our bodies what joy feels like to us. Smiling becomes the expression to signal happiness, laughing expresses our enjoyment, and warm arms wrapped around one another communicate love and intimacy. Expressing joy does not become an uncomfortable experience because it is pleasurable for us to demonstrate feelings that force the body to recline and rest. Joy is a little different though; the presence of joy does not necessarily mean that pain is indubitably eradicated.
There becomes a mutual relationship conceived between joy and pain. We find ourselves constantly juggling between expressing our anger one minute, and our happiness the next. There will never be a time in which we experience pain without joy being in the background or joy without pain around the corner. Life and its challenges make it impossible to solely focus on one aspect of either joy or pain. That means when pain becomes heavy, when we watch our tears slide onto the floor, the promise of love and authentic joy is always looking right back up at us. However, that also means when we are dancing through the day with our arms open wide, there is inevitably the chance that pain will slither its way back into our hearts. It’s uncomfortable to know that pain will always be with us in life; it’s more invigorating to realize that joy always has its arms wrapped around us.
I challenge you to see the good in your days. Life is not perfect, and neither are you, so allow yourself some grace. Feel the pain and allow it to boil, boil, boil, and evaporate back into the atmosphere. Hold onto joy. Pick it from your garden and take care of it—cut the stems and water it. Take in the sweet aroma of life that is nurtured by the rest and relaxation that joy gives us. Allow joy to grow; pull the weeds of pain out of your garden. They will be there always, and their thorns may hurt, but don’t forget to smell the cultivation of flowers that lay beneath those thorns.
Strike Out,
Writer: Katherine Stegall
Blog Editor: Sarah Singleton
Chattanooga
