Pain changes people for the worse. It can change a devout, religious man to an unrelenting malefactor or a young, ambitious man to a smoking pothead. Sadly love, the strongest force of life cannot exist without pain. The road to wisdom and strength comes with the innumerable and formidable hurdles of pain. However, in between that pain and understanding, something happens – we change undeniably. No one gets out of pain being the same person they were before.
We still love, nowhere as ferociously as we used to. We keep an eye out always, are reachable mostly on phone than in person, depleted of the childlike innocence, our purity defiled, not the hopeless romantic once we were. We lose our carefree attitude, fear sets in, envelop ourselves with an aversion for commitment as we don’t want to get rejected. Bitterness defines and protects us from making the same mistakes again. We can live forever without confessing our love for someone else because we somehow believe they don’t love us back. We break hearts to save our own!
We love, but it comes with conditions and prerequisites. We love in bits and pieces, never fully. We love when we are certain about someone and the timing is convenient for us. We love when we can protect ourselves, when it is the right time. We love when it is safe to let the guard down!
We hope but it is always supplemented by fear. Our mindset is programmed to think of many ways how things can go wrong, how the good would be cut short, how things will turn against us. Our weak defence mechanisms have imagined how to deal with situations when things go wrong, even when they are fine. Expecting bad outcomes has become the norm. We live to find small packets of joy every now and then, never allowing happiness to complete our lives. We don’t believe good things last as we are imprisoned to imagine that life has a devious plan to take it all away in one stroke.
We don’t give life a chance to surprise us, we settle for a mundane, boring life without ever taking a risk. We don’t experience moments that take our breath away. We don’t want to feel disappointed, instead, we disappoint ourselves. We try to predict the future based on our past so that we are prepared when life lets us down.
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We dream but we don’t believe in them. Dreaming too big makes us shake and shudder and we don’t chase our dreams as our previous failures have convinced us that we’ll fail again, we’ll lose again and left feeling worthless. We want to prove to others and ourselves that we’re good enough, have the ability to attain our aspirations. We try to act responsibly and dream within reach, never too big, never that seems unattainable. We don’t dream the impossible. Never looking up and never too far away, we surmise miracles and magic don’t happen. We ignore and silence that whisper calling us out from the bottom of our hearts to act on our dreams. We simply shrug and don’t answer that call because we have concluded that they won’t happen to us. We gather based on our past experiences that we don’t deserve the kind of happiness that emanates after dreams are fulfilled.
We don’t expect to be awed by miracles and wonders ever since our dreams turned into nightmares.
The suffering involved with pain changes people. They do everything they can to escape the agony and affliction. They don’t want to bear the same pain, sink to the ground, and hit rock bottom all over again. They don’t want to be pushed into that pit of despair, cry their eyes out, and feel weak and powerless.
But, when we are too focused on avoiding pain, we don’t give ourselves a chance of feeling pleasure. We keep away from taking risks that could change our lives forever. When we don’t love, we deprive ourselves of love in return.
Pain affects us deeply on many levels. It changes the way we live, love, hope, and dream. It changes our belief system so much that we stop believing in miracles and happiness. I wish pain could be like the time that slips away in each moment but it is as permanent as the circle of life and death, the only difference being – pain isn’t cyclic. It just comes and stays. I wish we had it in ourselves to change pain, instead of it changing us. I wish we could go back to being the whole selves we were before pain broke us.