The Burn Lets You Know It's Working

As I think I said in an earlier post, pain is not my thing. I don't necessarily go out of my way to avoid it, but I definitely don't seek it out. But there is one sort of pain that actually feels great.

No! Not that. Jeez, what? No!* I'm talking about the all-over body buzz you get after a really good day of hard work. It's a pain you wear as a badge of honor. As a reminder that you (hopefully) accomplished something that day. Or even if you didn't, you at least put yourself in forward motion. You worked and slaved, doing whatever important or unimportant thing you did, and you are left with a fully tactile reminder for at least the next few days.

Same thing with working out. You know you got things right at the gym or the courts or the pool or the laser tag tournament when you wake up sore and stiff the next morning. When "a little hair of the dog that bit ya" would actually send you to the hospital. That's a good workout. Pain is your bodies way of telling you that something needed fixing, and you broke out the right tools.

The moral is, just like peroxide on a gaping flesh wound, you have to feel the burn in order to know it's working.


*Sorry. No judgment here. If that's your sort of thing, have at it. As long as you, and her and her, and him, the hermit crab and that roving band of gypsies are okay with it, and no one gets hurt any more than they sign on for, knock yourself out (or have them knock you out.)

After the Pain Subsides

This is not a shout out to masochism.  Given my druthers I'd always opt for no pain in any given situation.  My pain threshold is fine, but I'd rather leave it untested.

I'm simply mentioning that there is something magical about how you feel after an acute pain has subsided.  Logically, it would seem, you should feel exactly the same as you did before the pain began.  In both moments you're existing without pain.  Except that the memory of pain recently past colors your experience of "no pain" in the latter scenario.  Maybe that comparison makes the "after" moment seem more pleasant.

As an example, after a particularly bad headache has passed for me, I feel happier and more buoyant than before the pain started.  It's almost pleasurable.  In both cases I don't have a headache.  There seems to be a double truth when one says, "I feel better."  Not only do you feel better than when you were in pain, you feel better even than your earlier, pre-pain resting state.

It may just be the residual endorphins floating around in your brain, causing a sort of mild euphoria.  Regardless I'm glad the human brain deals with pain that way.  I assume its part of the reason women give birth to more than one child.

As a related aside, my sister is due in ten days!