Pain

I love the above scene from Star Trek. In it, Captain Kirk tells that pain is not something to be avoided or that guilt can be casually erased from one's life....but I see many people spending a great deal of their own lives trying to do just that. Lord Byron wrote "The great art of life is the sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain". However; most of us follow the advice of another great poet, Daffy Duck, who says "I hate pain, it hurts".

So we avoid it. Through drugs, religion, possessions, or just flat out denial we spend mighty effort to not feel...bad....uncomfortable....pain. Because it hurts.

But it makes us who we are. Of all the regrets I have in my life (and I've got a shitload of them) I can honestly say that I wouldn't want to do things differently. The road I traveled got me to this here and now and if I had turned right instead of left somewhere along the way, I would never have had many of the current joys in my life. My kids, my grandkids, my wife, my friends....gone if I had avoided some pain at some time or another.

To live a life in fear of pain....to me....seems the most intense, and unnecessary, type of all.