When something which for us stands as the most horrible, abhorrent and unwanted occurs, spiritual pain starts creeping in. We can express our pain through a wide variety of feelings such as sadness, frustration, anger, helplessness, shock, anxiety, fear, emptiness, etc.
Pain is personal. It is no wonder we tend to get angry when a person, with all her/his good intents and purposes, tries to make sense of what our pain is about. Phrases like: “it is going to be all right” or “do not worry about it” often disturb us further. The more we listen to such comments, the angrier we become. Perhaps we start realising how isolated we are in our pain.
On the other hand, pain can also be public. It can change our behaviour to the extent that we can become suspicious of others, angry, intolerant, or self-absorbed. People around us may start finding it difficult to relate to us simply because our way of communicating with them would rule out any possibility of having an interpersonal relationship with them. Pain can really severe our social support since people, out of respect or anger, may somehow decide to take their distance away from us. Some of us who are caught up in our pain tend to become more dependent on those who give us some attention. We start putting impossible demands on them. When these people rightly start to challenge us on our unreasonable expectations, we tend to let our pain fester to the point that we make ourselves believe that we are not accepted for who we are in that situation. Undoubtedly this would add more to our awful feeling of isolation. Is there a way out of this appalling way of being? The answer is in the affirmative. We need to resort back to our independence.
Independence from our bitterness at what happened to us is the royal road to healing. Beautiful as it looks, independence brings with it an outright confrontation with our resistance to grow. Independence means risking. In it there is a choice to be made: either going forward or backwards. The very fact that we experience resistance in our way of growth is already a good thing. The Chinese proverb throws an invaluable light on this reality: “There can be no growth without resistance.” In our wish to be on our feet again and achieve that healthy independence from our pain, we need to embrace detachment and discernment.
Detachment means, to put it in Ignatian terms, taking a spiritual indifference to anyone and anything. It means being totally open to the manifold ways God’s will is expressed. The more we open ourselves up to it, the freer we become both spiritually and psychologically. Holy indifference makes us aware that life is such a precious gift full of life-giving opportunities that there is no room in it for despair, isolation and death of our spirit. Detachment teaches us to let go of these devastating ways of being so as to espouse new creative modes of living.
Discernment helps us a great deal in this. First of all, it grounds us in our reality by presenting to us our limits as well as our strengths. It realistically makes us appreciate who we are and what we are capable of. Adding to that, discernment inculcates in us the wisdom of being reasonably open to the possibilities we can fully achieve while giving us the freedom to choose which of them are the best for us at that particular moment in time.
Our life here on earth is not immune of pain. Yet if we truly understand that our life is much more than the pain we carry within our hearts, then our existence would be more productive, hopeful and loving. Furthermore, by detaching from and discerning our pain, we not only can make of it some sense but also can use it as a resource to treasure our life and others’ as well.
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap