Topic: coping
Tom Doyle says that the person he's found hardest to forgive is himself. For keeping his own pain alive.
That raises the questions: "How do I kill the pain that comes to all, from not living in 'paradise' or from, psychologically, 'living in the paradise of denial' without medicating it or acting compulsively?"
"How do I accept pain as a part of life and realize that it doesn't really have to be totally annihilated?"
"How do I learn to use the pain as a warning sign?"
"How do I not allow dysfunctional pain--which physiologically comes from an old injury that really makes the pain useless and senseless today--to take over my life?" Perhaps that means finding a way to "cut the nerve," which is a method used by neurologists in some situation. The problem is that cutting a nerve leaves some section numb, so that it cannot feel some pleasant sensations, as well.
I think the answers to these questions are as many as the people in this world. We do not stop pain until we no longer are drawing oxygen into our lungs. We learn to manage it. In a world where everyone we meet is struggling with invisible pain over some issue.
When I look at it like that, I realize just how complicated "bearing one another's burdens" can be. As complicated as bearing our own!
