Be the End of Pain

What if there is a person who could be the end of pain?

The pain could be of any type – emotional or physical.

Rather than be a cause of pain or a means to perpetuate it, what if a person could end it?

This line of thought may sound strange to most of us because we usually do not consider this a possibility.

But stay with me.

For any pain occurring anywhere in the world, when it reached a person, he would find it in himself to say that the pain ends here, and then it would truly end there. He would not cause any new pain to anyone, based on any of the pain he had experienced, no matter how acute the pain and no matter how much pain he was to endure.

Even if this person received pain from argumentative, hurtful, or uncaring people, he would still not need to deliver that pain to others.

He would lose that desire that we all appear to have, even all of us who consider ourselves good—the desire to inflict pain. We may not see it, we may deny it, we may even shy away from this reality, but search deep in your mind and your experiences and acknowledge that there was a time when you have been joyous to deliver pain to someone.

But what if you were ready to be the end of pain?

A person could belittle you, lie to you, steal from you, and blame you wrongfully and without reason. Nonetheless, you would still let it all go, let the pain dissipate, allowing it to disappear into nothingness.

You would be able to say to yourself:

“The pain ends here.”

This would be one of the most difficult challenges of your life, to receive pain and then be able to say that this pain does not deserve a home. Then let it float away like the wind, with nowhere to stay and linger.

This would require a tremendous commitment and perhaps even need to become a life goal. That is, if a person were ever to have any hope of being an endpoint to pain, giving it no room to breathe.

Of course, the task of ending pain is not an easy one.

Instead, what tends to happen is that the pain infiltrates us, making us angry, hateful, bitter beings. Of course, when that happens, we can only perpetuate that pain. But then, the pain is just magnified, for it finds a home in our hearts, and we also spread it into others’ hearts. Then they spread it into others’ hearts.

One generation spreads it to another.

One civilization spreads it to another.

Eventually, the pain faucet is open, on full blast, seemingly unstoppable.

And all we hear about is pain.

It must be natural to feel pain and then feel the need to release it, but the result is more and more pain. If pain has no place where it goes to die and be finished, the pain can only grow.

We all water and nourish the pain, yet we forget to take personal accountability for it.

I wonder:

Who can feel pain, perhaps even tremendous amounts of it, and then find the strength in themselves to have the pain submit to them, rather than them submit to it?

Keep in mind that much of society rewards or encourages getting revenge when someone has been truly wronged. If the pain suffered is large enough, the only relief may be to inflict that pain back to its source.

Unfortunately, that does not end the pain, and if anything, it makes it worse.

The issue is that the pain will often undermine our goals, and we will become puppets to it. Many of us would consider ourselves good people, but as soon as any pain is inflicted on us, we view it as righteous to inflict the same kind of pain back to its source. The pain becomes greater than us then, and the pain controls us then.

Look around one day and see that every person around you has suffered some pain, even if it is not visible to you, just as you have suffered. If you believe you have suffered greatly, remember that some of the people you see today will have suffered even more than you, and they may just keep quiet about it.

Many of us pretend to have our lives together but are secretly in pain, and we will not know how to manage that pain. The easiest way appears to be to inflict it onto others, as that is all we have ever seen.

Someone feels pain and inflicts it on another person, gaining some temporary relief that way. Then that person passes it on, and the next person passes it on. And we are like a relay race, passing the baton of pain to the next person. Even worse, we tend to carry the pain inside, which means we continue spreading it to more people.

We may even say that the pain has taken the human as its host. If the pain is in control, then you are a host to that pain.

Some people who are ruled by the pain of their lives may pass a baton of pain to every person they meet in a day.

Passing on the pain is all we have seen, and all we know. So, of course, we are inclined to do this ourselves. However, inflicting pain may only offer temporary relief. Ending the pain altogether may help offer more permanent peace to more people, as the pain will have nowhere to go.

The pain itself can meet its end and death, but we are reluctant to wake up to that fact. Most of us would even deny that this is possible.

We cling to the idea that if I am wronged, I can also wrong another person.

Can you move beyond that level of thinking, and find it in yourself at some point in your life to say:

“The pain ends here.”

You may think that the pain will become a burden to those who do not inflict it on others. It will eat this person alive, as the pain will become an obsession and wear away at them emotionally.

Why not accept it as your reward in knowing that the pain has dissipated, not needing to travel further around the world and that it ends with you. If you can learn to cope with it and move on, forgive the person who spawned it, and prevent countless other victims from suffering at the hands of it, then wouldn’t that be a great reward on its own?

Ask yourself what the alternative would be? Is it more worthy to end the pain or to perpetuate it?

Even if ending the pain is a challenge, isn’t it a worthy one to rise up to?

Not many people take even a moment to see all the pain in the world, how it unfolds in our lives, how it perpetuates and magnifies, and what little good or use it has done. In many cases, the pain has only served to create more of itself. And we have acted as instruments of it.

Are we born to receive pain and inflict it back onto others? Does that make any sense?

I’m not sure what it takes for anyone to get to a point where they have no desire to spread any pain or get payback for any wrongs committed against them.

But what if you could begin on that path today?

Of course, you do not need to end all the pain that comes your way. That may be too grand of a task and too grand of an expectation.

However, even if you could end some of the pain, especially the petty or needless pain that would go nowhere other than to magnify itself in the world, then that would go a long way toward doing some good.