Physical Pain - A Curse?

If you get injured, stretch your muscle, fracture your bone or have some swelling or infection, you feel pain. Pain, to certain extent, is tolerable. The degree of tolerance varies from person to person. Nobody likes pain. Nobody can live without it. Pain, a personal feeling, sometimes becomes so intolerable that we tend to question the intentions of Nature (God) behind pain. Is pain a curse? To most of us who have passed through unbearable long-duration pain, it is. We pray to God to free us from this curse as early as possible.

Let us, for a moment, assume that the God approves our prayer and puts us in the state of Zero-pain. If this happens it is a matter of celebration for us but most of us would soon realize that it is a bigger curse than to have pain. We consider pain as a factor causing discomfort. In stead we should see to it as a signal indicating some physical disorder and it is this physical disorder that creates discomfirt. Imagine if a person has no feeling of pain whatever happens to him. Now, if one of his bones is fractured he would not have any pain and, in turn, he would not know that he has broken his bone. If he continues to work, the condition of his bone would worsen, without his knowledge, to the extent that may bring  some permanent disability or even fatality.

There are people in this world who cannot feel even slightest of pain. These people are vulnerable to greater physical injuries to the extent that the injury turns into a permanent disability and for the rest of their life they become dependent on others. Remember pain is not only the indicator of a disorder, it is also necessary for determining the level of recovery one has attained by treatment. So, in absence of pain the treatment becomes almost impossible.

It is clear that pain is not a curse but a blessing in disguise and what is needed is developing a higher level of tolerance and, believe it or not, the tolerance level can be increased if we accept pain as an 'inevitable'  part of our life.