The Art of Pain Management
I’ve made the claim several times that athletes and artists share a lot in common, and that one of the things they share is the ability to manage pain, or to use pain as a transforming, rather than debilitating, force in their lives and work.
I’m a bit obsessed by the topic, and my new poetry collection Traumatology, to be released in a few days, explores traditional and contemporary concepts of health as divided into three categories: mind, body, and spirit. While I am happy with the subjects explored in the collection, I almost wish that I could add, at this last minute, some poems relating to what I’ve learned about health, pain, and the body-mind-spirit dynamic by watching the Paralympic athletes compete.
I feel lucky that, aside from smoking—which I quit once I realized I wasn’t young enough to smoke and run anymore—I’ve been a physically healthy and active person. I also feel lucky that I seem to possess great mental strength and determination. One of the documents relating to my life that I am most proud of is a psychological evaluation report conducted a year after my mother ran off. The doctor concludes: Child exhibits trauma. Child exhibits excellent coping mechanisms. It’s not a bad biographical sketch to live up to. And I try. I deal with mental anguish—melancholy, pessimism, existential angst, utter rage, disdain, horror—on a near daily basis. A lot of people don’t believe me when I say this, because I love to laugh and embrace the joys of the high life, but it’s true. I’m restless, and terrified, and angry, but am determined to fight back. Through my art, I try to confront the causes of our human suffering, to give it form, if not meaning.
Though I do sometimes wonder what it means to live in that pain. Does it mean I sometimes like it? I wouldn’t say that I like physical pain (I’ve never punched anyone, and paper-cuts distress me), but when my legs are aching and my throat is burning when I’m running, I sometimes realize that I’m actually smiling. Same when I’m writing a sad, brutal poem. Do we just know each other now so well as adversaries or opponents that we have some of the habits of friends? Or am I smiling because deep down I’m thinking: You won’t win. You can’t take me down.
I know that the Paralympics is an uplifting celebration of the human spirit, but to me it’s also the flicking of a giant middle-finger up to fate, a f*** you to anyone who ever said you shouldn’t or couldn’t. It’s a mastery of pain: physical, mental, psychological. The paradox is that one must live in pain to master it. These athletes not only deal with the massive challenges in this area that all elite athletes face, but have also had to handle pain in beneficial ways to be able to live with their illnesses and injuries and all the problems, challenges, and prejudices that go with them. Some of the competing athletes were born with their disabilities, some were able-bodied athletes before becoming injured, some are war veterans or victims of violence. They each have discovered strategies, or coping mechanisms, to use that pain as an intense, motivating force, and to not get bogged down in the “why me?” question. It’s as if they just admit pain, rather than fight it: Yes, I’m in pain. So what? That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop doing what I want to do.
We hit limits, of course. But in sport and art people test those limits all the time. When they test the limits, they encourage others to find ways to shatter them. (Sometimes it’s the next generation that figures it out, but the trailblazers, even those who failed to achieve their goals, needed to press up against those boundaries before they could be broken down.) Whenever I have writing students who have played competitive sports, they are usually much more willing to put in the hours of discipline needed to complete pieces of work. They don’t expect it to be easy, and are less likely to shy away from struggle and the pain of the process. They know that, most likely, if they keep at it, they will see results. And even if they don’t, the pain will have taught them something about themselves, or about the subject of writing, which they didn’t know before.
(Today’s poem was written in response to watching visually impaired alpine skiers fall or crash. I am boggled by the bravery required to send yourself down a hill when if you fall you will have very little idea of where you will be on the course or what you might hit on the way down.)
