Life Is Pain

"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." -The Princess Bride

I had a rough weekend.

It started with a terrible dream, followed by an extended bout of insomnia that left me in a fog of anxiety and discomfort. We were scheduled to have a family dinner Sunday night, but my mounting insecurity led me to send J and the kids without me.

While avoiding a social event seemed the most gentle choice for myself, I wondered why it was {and is} that so often I become obsessively ashamed of my body when I'm depressed. What had started out as feeling just a little off-kilter and sad had quickly transformed into a full-fledged case of self-loathing.

I couldn't possibly be in the presence of normal, attractive people and pretend to be one of them, I thought. They would see right through me. Being caught trying to walk among them would be torture of the highest order. An unredeemable embarrassment.

I knew, at least on some level, that these thoughts were ridiculous; self-defeating and entirely unhelpful. But where do they come from? They're like a well-worn path that my brain unconsciously treads with the slightest provocation. The ease with which I walk it must mean I've thought this way for a long, long time. I reason that even the most hurtful coping mechanisms were-- once upon a time-- just that. Coping mechanisms.

My theory is this: a long time ago, I was a teenager with very little control of my life, and a very high level of fear surrounding that. It felt powerful and affirming to set goals {run 4 miles} and achieve them. It was meditative and calming to know that whatever else happened, I could succeed in controlling my body.

It was healthy until it wasn't.

Because somewhere along the line, it stopped being simply a means of dealing with pain and fear, and became a hoped-for cure to pain and fear.

Instead of thinking,  I'll feel happier after I go running I'd think, I wouldn't be so sad if I looked like a real runner.

Instead of feeling a sense of accomplishment as I achieved goals, I began seeing my unmet, unrealistic goals {to look like a model} as the source of all that was wrong with my life. I wanted to feel complete-- inoculated from all dissatisfaction and uncertainty. I wanted to be a finished product.

I still do this. Unknowingly, yes, but still-- whenever uncomfortable feelings start to overwhelm me, I tread that well-worn path of thought. If I could fit those old size 0 jeans, this wouldn't hurt me so much. Aside from being patently untrue, thoughts like these inevitably lead to shame and despise, not motivation. I sink into a pit of despair.

What snaps me out of it is often a variation on a theme. {It seems I must learn the same lesson, over and over again.} I remember that when the Buddha was asked to reveal the meaning of life, he replied, "Life is pain." A rather macabre statement, but one that I find oddly comforting. I looked it up; In fact, the inescapability of pain is the first of the Four Noble Truths.

Remembering that life is pain frees me from reading too much into painful experiences. Pain does NOT mean that I'm unworthy of happiness until I'm thinner or richer or admired or what-have-you. Pain does not mean God is punishing me, or testing me, or playing cruel games with me. Pain does not mean that I'm just pessimistic and could be blindingly happy if I would look on the bright side. Pain is just life, and remembering that saves me from wasting my time hopelessly trying to avoid it.

I had a therapist once who said that the degree to which we open ourselves to pain is the degree to which we open ourselves to joy. That we cannot experience one without the other, and that when we live in fear or pursuit of only one, we live a half life.

I think of all the good people in this world who have suffered and yet done heroic, good things with their lives. I think of how none of us ever has true control over anything. I think of how little it matters in the end what dress size I wear. I think of all the small yet sacred things I can do with my time if only I wouldn't allow fear of pain to derail me.

I'm trying to condense all these thoughts into a concise mantra I can feed myself as I tread a new path of thought in my brain: "I am not my body. Life is pain. Embrace it. Look for God in it."

Baby steps, people.

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