Welcome to PTFTD, a (semi-)regular feature on my blog. Each (ideally daily) post I will raise a topic for consideration that may hopefully give you pause for some serious, or not-so-serious contemplation throughout your day/night/week/life.
It’s as much for my personal benefit as anyone else’s who may find it of interest, as we all try to figure out just what life is all about and what on Earth we are all doing here or to each other?
Today’s Thought:
Pain is a very quick (in some ways, slow in others) Teacher.
It can be a good teacher in that it really gets our attention focused on the important issue of the moment, but it is a bad teacher in that it rarely lets us fully move our focus onto other things after we have understood the initial idea – it can keep us focused on somethings we need to let go of and move on from, hopefully as a wiser person.
Pain can teach us very many things except how to avoid feeling more pain.
Sometimes pain persists long after the message we needed to know has been fully received… or do we only think we Fully received it?
I need to think on this for a while (longer) 🙂
love.
BLob's Blog 
“Pain can teach us very many things except how to avoid feeling more pain.”
For some reason, I’m thinking of an event. When my brother was a kid, he was very curious. Maybe…too curious. We’re a very tactile family. 🙂 One day, he was fascinated by the bright red coils of the burner on the stove top. He decided to place the palm of his hand on it when it was set to the highest setting. The pain he felt that day taught him to NEVER do that again. 😀 In this case, I guess pain is a quick teacher.
In other situations, I think of complex emotional events in which people get stuck on things that need to be let go. It’s almost like hot tar sticking to you that is difficult to peel away. So many people want to let go of the things that cause severe depression yet it lingers. Is it because our memories store the emotions that come with these ideas and life lessons?
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You got exactly the idea i was hoping to pass on to all! 🙂
I was watching Alain de Botton video recently (Have you heard of him? he’s genius in helping us understand more of ourselves!) and he pointed out that particularly concerning who we love, we can often get our minds stuck in the same tracks we developed in our earliest experiences of love(slash dependency)… those between our selves and our mother/sustainer in our early months of life. They were not always only positive experiences of being happy and getting exactly what we wanted, but had times where we were left alone, hungry, scared, not knowing what was going on etc. ( and for some perhaps even worse!?). He said that we love not what makes us happiest, but what is most familiar – makes us feel most like we felt way back then. happy in some circumstances mixed with not-so-happy in others.
Basically we don’t do ‘happy only and ever after’ all that well! 🙂
Some people learn (and do not escape from) that love can mean pain and disappointment and don’t quite figure out the way to get out of that pattern, that unfamiliarity than can seem ‘comforting’ by it’s relatable familiarity.
Wow – we’re going deep here tonight huh?? 😉
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Well, when you’re talking about philosophy, depth is needed! We can’t find our treasure if we’re just wading on the surface, can we? 🙂
Hm! I am checking out Alain right now! A video on why we will never marry the right person! lol, boy oh boy…. I’ve never heard of this guy before, but he sure is fascinating!
I do think there is a point here. We do lean towards what’s familiar to us. I think the idea used to keep me up at night! I wondered if I was going to just perpetuate the cycle of mistakes and behavior my ancestors may have made. Even my mother takes one look at me and says, “You’re me!” This uncanny moment makes me feel strange… 🙂
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You’re right… it’s nice if you can find nuggets lying on the surface to pick up but the best ones are generally a little way further down under the surface 🙂
The moment you realise you are turning/have turned into your mother/father is a very disconcerting and slightly defeating one! 😉
Seeking the familiar is a definite human trait as it allows us some much needed certainty in an uncertain world. But too much familiarity and comfort can lead to complacency and the lack of challenges in life prevents our growth into the adults we are capable of becoming. Like most aspects of life there is a reasonably happy ‘middle road’ which can give us good, if not perhaps the greatest results! 😉
The Alain video… that’s one of the ones i watched too! 🙂
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Ciao, buon giovedì 🙂
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Ciao! 🙂
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