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Run Pain, Run A More Mystical Approach to Pain Management – By Rabbi Pinchas Winston
We were not born into pain. It was a consequence of the sin of eating from the Aitz HaDa’as Tov v’Ra. That led to expulsion from Paradise into a world of pain and suffering. We’re obviously able to enjoy ourselves a lot in this world, but compared to the pleasure of Gan Aiden, what we’re lacking is also part of the pain of this world.
It’s a great motivator, pain is. It’s just that it doesn’t always motivate us in the right spiritual direction. Usually it doesn’t. We believe that we shouldn’t have to suffer and resent it when we do. Therefore, we are devoted to avoiding pain and feel justified in being so. Even if we accept that pain is an unavoidable part of life, most people don’t accept that it is a necessary part of life.
This means that even though we have motivational statements like “no pain, no gain,” people spend so much time and energy trying to gain without pain. And even though we are told, “According to the suffering is the reward” (Pirkei Avos 5:23), we look for ways to get reward without suffering.
It’s a body thing. The pain we fear most is the kind felt by the body. The body was not built for comfort, but it certainly became that way after leaving the comfort of Paradise. Once, we had skin like light—kasnos ohr—and our bodies were more like souls. But then we sinned and were transformed, resulting in bodies made from skin—kasnos ohr.
That’s when pain became a thing for us. For her share in the sin, God told Chava:
I will increase your sorrow and your pregnancy; in pain you shall bear children. (Bereishis 3:16)
Before the sin, childbirth was easy, quick, and pleasant. Not so after. Before the sin, food was also an entirely different experience. After the sin, this applied:
By the sweat of your brow, you will eat bread… (Bereishis 3:19)
And though we can now buy bread without sweating much, we still have to “sweat” to make the money to pay for it. Regardless, the bottom line is that the world outside of Gan Aiden is one in which we must expend energy and time, having lost immortality as well, and both of which we have limited quantities.
The rest of history since has been about beating the rap. It has been about finding the perfect painkillers in whatever form they may come. To live is to know pain, but to know painkillers is to lessen that pain, perhaps even manage it, to try and maintain some level of pleasure nevertheless.
Because we were made for pleasure. We were created in Paradise, and it is to Paradise that we long to return. Desperate to get back, we grasp at whatever aspect of Paradise we can find…often at great sacrifice to life itself, in this world, and, more importantly, in the next world, the real gain of our pain in the here and now.
It turns out that the difference between a great person and an average one is the pain they are prepared to live with to accomplish meaningful goals. A great person may fear pain like the next person, but they also know better than to just run away from it. They may not embrace pain (who does?), but they try hard not to let it get in the way of doing ultimately meaningful things.
Even more so, they understand and appreciate that the pain is not a sideshow but part of the main event. We were sent packing from Gan Aiden for tikun, our rectification, and the world’s rectification. If we left with pain, it was because we needed to accomplish both.
One year, I herniated a disk in my back. It had been happening for years, but it only took two days to become the most excruciating pain I have ever known—even on prescription painkillers they keep in a safe. You don’t know how well-protected nerves are in the body until they no longer are.
Not only was the pain terrible and demoralizing but there was no position I could take that eased it even a little. Something as simple as getting off the sofa and walking a couple of feet to the bathroom was torture. Basic daily activities become almost impossible tasks.
It was the first time I could see why some people with incurable pain would choose to end their lives instead. I could see why someone not concerned about a Torah prohibition against suicide would choose death over such debilitating pain, especially if they believed it would never go away. What kind of life is it when death seems more appealing?
I am obviously not the first person to ask that question, and certainly not the last. And whatever pain I suffered over the six weeks to recovery, I did recover, thank God. As traumatic as my pain was, it was not traumatic enough to remain an active memory past a year. So many others have it far worse.
But everything in life is relative. Sadness is sadness, even if the reason for one person’s seems so much more trivial than the reason for another’s. Suffering is suffering, even if one person’s suffering seems so minimal compared to the suffering of another. Externals vary from person to person and from moment to moment. But each of us lives life based upon our perception of it, and that is personal and in the brain.
The difference is in the outcome. Someone can believe that their world is coming to an end because of something but quickly finds out otherwise simply because they exaggerated their problem. For others, the problem may end up being as serious as they thought and actually beyond recovery as they feared.
But for the period that both their brains perceived an insurmountable problem, they were equally distressed. They were both faced with the same decision, and that was what to do about life with the problem. They had to decide what to do about their pain…how to live with it and despite it.
The question is as old as man himself. It’s the answer that keeps changing from generation to generation.
