Pain can be the most traumatic as well as destructive experience a human person can go through. Already at the prospect of pain, certain people tremble with fear. They tend to become defensive to the point of forcefully trying to thrash it out of their system. But the good news about pain is that the more one relates to it with courage, the more it becomes bearable and integrative. In his book entitled Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign, Marni Jackson makes the following analysis: “Work against pain, and you lose. Work with pain, and the struggle lightens.”

An instantaneous reaction to pain is that the person feels imprisoned in his/her own world and is inclined to see solely his/her own painful situation. In order for a person to be loosened from pain’s embrace, it is important to widen his/her own life perspective, casting his/her attention to others and the wider world.

Promising as it looks, this is only possible if a person lets himself/herself be wrapped in his/her own pain. When approached with a listening ear and an open heart, pain can be truly transforming. As Kristin M. Swenson commented in the epilogue of her influential book on pain Living through pain: “We cannot live fully without risking the pain of injury and loss. Our chall-enge, then, is tenderly and patiently to wrap the pain into a life made richer and more beautiful not for the pain itself but for the process of our response to it”.

Thus, befriending pain is the secret of managing it successfully!

Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap

San Gwann