Our behavior is determined either by pursuit of pleasure or avoidance of pain. We seek multiple avenues to avoid pain both physical and emotional. The success or failure determines our future behavior and experience.
Physical pain, especially acute, is to guide us to stay healthy. It forces us to rest that part of the body in pain till healing has happened. It at times brings our attention to the pathology and forces us to seek medical help. Back pain, neck pain, tooth ache, sprains, muscular pains belong to this class which supposedly should alter our behavior to become healthy.
Sometimes we voluntarily endure pain to gain benefit. While exercising if one wants to increase muscle strength and endurance,one needs to exercise till the edge of one's capability. It is when you think that you cannot do one more bench press or pull up that you get the benefit. Even during this endeavor one needs to be alert not to hurt oneself. Muscle, ligament tears can result because of exercising in the wrong way! Also one should not exercise when one has fever, gastroenteritis or other ailment as the reserve ability of the body is less.
This piece of writing is prompted by the severe malaise and body ache i had yesterday on account of fever and bowel disturbance. But more than that it is the account of pain by
Dan Ariely.
I started by mentioning how acute pain is there to help us! But are all acute pains helpful? How does acute pain experienced by burns patient helpful?
To read the account of Dan Ariely's encounter with pain click
here.
In his account he does mention that the memory of social\emotional pain is stronger than physical pain.
Intend to research more on the topic of pain-all forms and varieties. On a day to day basis see the way my father endures pain caused by Parkinson disease, both chronic and acute. Multiple medications at times relieve his pain or are overwhelmed. I would say pain relief is both an art and science!
My mother who suffers from osteoarthritis has almost ceased to complain pain from that disease after dad started his journey of Parkinson. Her ability to tolerate pain has increased or is that she considers it futile to complain!!
As i research and ponder more will share my thoughts. Will like to end for now with few points:
1.Our ability to tolerate pain is limited.
2. Our will power supply everyday is limited. So we need to prioritize its use.
3. Our ability to empathize and sympathize is also limited!
Are they capabilities which can be increased? Can we measure them?
I personally believe that one can increase those capabilities!! For this belief i will have to research methods to measure it and do some experiment!
