PAIN
Scale of 1-100
Shared Meaning
Once in the hospital post op, a nurse asked on a scale of one to ten what is your pain level? My mother from her chair near the window where she read aloud to me said", "A normal person’s pain level is not an Annon pain level." The nurse got huffy and Mother explained, "The Annons have a very high pain threshold.”
My paternal grandfather went to the doctor with a heart issue. The doctor asked him how much pain are you in. Well, my grandfather thought, I can walk and drive and talk so I am uncomfortable but not in great pain. My father had rheumatoid arthritis from rheumatic fever and lived in constant chronic pain that he overrode.
Why let pain run your life?
I mentioned to a healer I know well, "On a pain scale from 1-10...does 10 mean it hurts so bad you are dead or want to be?" She laughed and said that's not what they mean. What they mean by a 10 is what you would consider a 5. Hmm… So I have thought about this, the assumptions that we all make every day. How we so often think we are using the same scale and our assumptions differ completely.
I muse about the spiritual seekers who went to India and never understood in their bodies the suffering their teachers taught about including death, starvation, slavery, the loss of children, listening to the discussions of how loosing the stashes of money challenged and deepened their spiritual practices. How they began to understand suffering.
On a scale of one to ten what do we know of suffering?
What is ten on that scale?