Pain
PainPain, an acute mental or emotional discomfort, is experienced by
everyone many times during the course of his or her lives. This
discomfort to a person may be the result of slipping on a patch of ice
on the sidewalk, or may be the result of working hard on ones homework.
Whatever the cause, precautions can be taken to avoid pain, like wearing
a helmet while bicycling, but painful situations pop up all the time.
Pain during the coarse of ones life is inevitable. Misery, mental
suffering or extreme bodily suffering or discomfort: extreme
unhappiness, may not be present for everyone, and is more easily avoided
than pain. Misery usually occurs when many things go wrong, or if one
major thing in someone’s life goes wrong. These things are meaningful
and the misery involved is optional. An example of this could be someone
who goes to school, but doesn’t work, fails, and consequently ends up
without a job, and feels miserable. This situation could have been
avoided, if the person had worked hard at school. This demonstrates the
fact that misery can be due to major losses or failures. Therefore even
though insignificant causes of pain are inevitable, the things that mean
the most can be maintained, and misery is optional.
Pain can in some ways be prevented, with the help of preventative
measures like wearing a seat belt in a car, a wearing a helmet and pads
before going out biking. Even though these measures are applied, there
are some things that cannot be controlled, and luck also plays a factor
in a person encountering pain. First of all, every time a person goes
outside there is a chance that an accident will occur. If someone looses
control of their car on black ice, hits a tree and gets injured it
really is not their fault. One could say that this could be avoided by
not driving in winter, but this isn’t possible. People are active, and
as long as they are active there is always an element of risk involved.
If one makes dinner they may get burned, but food is needed for the
person’s survival. People take risks all the time and pain is somewhat
inevitable at different degrees. Some people have a high tolerance for
pain and seem to take more risks. Others are more cautious, but the
element of pain is always a factor.
Generally people are more susceptible to smaller sources of pain,
because they take small risks, however people are more careful when
confronted with serious pain, like the fact that someone may wear a
safety belt for protection, because of the potential severity of a car
crash, but do not wear a helmet if he or she goes bicycling in a park.
This is the idea behind misery being optional. Misery is extreme bodily
injury or extreme mental suffering, or unhappiness. Small risks are
always taken, but big ones aren’t because of their consequences. In this
sense misery can be avoided, at least physically. As for mental
suffering this usually occurs when something that means a lot to someone
goes wrong or sometimes never materializes. A good example of this would
be the example of someone who felt miserable because they dropped out of
school and ended up jobless. To avoid this misery they could have stayed
in school. In this case the person had an option, but it would have
meant working hard and enduring some pain or discomfort. Therefore this
example demonstrates the idea that misery was optional, the person could
have stayed at school. But pain must be felt in order to avoid misery.
In this case the person works and feels some discomfort in school, but
avoid misery which is a more severe type of pain.
Pain has to be endured to avoid certain types of misery, but misery can be present because of other causes that have nothing to do with pain. An
example of this would be jealousy, but this has to do with the person.
One chooses whether he or she is jealous and there again there is an
option. During one’s life time pain is inevitable because of it’s
unpredictability, but because of this it does not interfere with
happiness, if it did many people would be miserable, it is not a big
deal. Because misery is due to the wrong turning of something that means
a lot to a person, the magnitude is great. These meaningful things
however can be keep on the right path because they are big, and need
planning (unlike unpredictable painful situations). This provides people
with a chance to put their priorities straight and choose whether or
not, in the long term, if they want to be miserable.