I woke with a nasty headache this morning. It rises from locked up muscles alongside my arthritic vertebrae, like parallel columns of pain, becoming one just at the base of my neck and feeling rather ‘braided’ with tension up my neck, cradling my skull with an embrace of even more pain that wraps the lower back portion of my head. It is not acute nor pulsating, it is a more dull steady presence with more than necessary intensity. I have this headache relatively often. Generally, expressed in words, it sounds like this “I have a headache”. Other headaches sound more like this “I have a headache”. It isn’t possible to tell from words how severe someone else’s pain is. Pain doesn’t show much; by the time pain can be easily seen on my face, I am in so much more pain than can be easily managed that it’s not likely sympathy can do much more than offer a few kind words. I cherish the kindness.
Much of the time, because pain is not easily visible, my experience is one of being haplessly mistreated by well-meaning people, even people who know me well, and profess deep affection for me; they don’t know I am in pain, moment to moment. Simple requests sometimes sound quite ludicrous to me… “Can you just go ahead and…”. I have not yet learned to say “No, actually, I can’t ‘just’… I’m in too much pain to do that.” The amount of pain I am in this morning is well beyond the day-to-day pain I know so well. It’s hard to consider other things and look past the pain…and when I succeed in turning my attention elsewhere, I quickly find that whatever I am thinking over becomes tainted by the pain; my negative bias increases, I feel discontent, angry, frustrated, emotional, resentful… and it so easily changes from an experience of physical pain, to an experience of emotional pain. The result is often that I find myself blaming some circumstance for my feelings. My subjective emotional experience becomes the focus of my attention, distracting me from the pain but leading me down a rabbit hole of mis-information, negativity, doubt, insecurity, and fearful speculation not tied to my actual experience of events. Pain is a mind-altering drug, and it’s always a bad trip.
I woke early today. I woke because of the pain. This headache is that bad. I meditated quietly until the alarm went off; two hours passed pretty quickly. I feel reasonably calm, content, and balanced; I know that the pain has the potential to mess with my mind, and destroy my fragile lovely moment. Mindfulness, self-compassion, kind treatment of this mortal vessel I inhabit, and patient attentiveness to self-care basics will be incredibly important while this headache lingers. I know what to expect when I speak up about the headache, too. “Well, have you…?” and “When I have a headache, I…” or “What have you done for it?” People tend to be pretty well-meaning about headaches. It’s frustrating to wade through the helpful suggestions; I’ve been doing this awhile, and at 52 there’s not much in the way of new stuff to try for this headache. I work on staying calm and focused, and not crying over small bullshit simply because I hurt too much to handle real life well. It’s the best favor I can do the world on a morning like this one.
Choose your adventure. Choose your perspective. Choose your experience.
Oddly, this isn’t really a post about pain; it’s about the very subjective nature of perspective. Pain is a metaphor, but I’m finding it challenging to move on from the pain itself, this morning. Tedious.
I recently read some writing an associate did regarding a shared experience. The subjective nature of perspective being what it is, I reacted to the words before I remember to take a few breaths and approach the words mindfully and aware that the unique perspective presented has nothing whatever to do with my experience of those same events. It took some time to move past my initial reaction of irritation at the ‘obvious’ dishonesty, the ‘irresponsible minimization’, and [to me] clear use of the opportunity for image management; my perspective is also subjective. I managed to set that baggage down pretty easily, and reconsider the words as nothing more than personal narrative, subjective and likely well-intended, without judging the words as ‘truthful’ or ‘honest’. Regardless of any of that, they are the words this associate chose to describe the experiences we shared. While it does say something about my associate’s experience – and my associate – those words have nothing to do with my experience, at all. If I react, buy in, become angry and express my anger with demands that my associate change their perspective of the shared experience we had, I give up my own experience to own theirs as the valid reflection of events. It was a pretty joyful moment when that hit me; all I have to do to enjoy my experience from my own perspective when someone else’s perspective causes me discomfort, alarm, distress, or anger, is to go ahead and continue to have my own experience, from my own perspective! I validate my own experience fully by simply having it. Wow. Simple and powerful.
Every one of us has our own perspective. Being able to comfortably listen and hear another person’s perspective improves my ability to be compassionate, to be kind, to be wise… and it also eases me into a lovely place with myself, too; more able to treat myself well, by honoring my own experience as real and true, and mine. It isn’t about who is ‘right’ – ‘right’ doesn’t enter into my subjective perspective of my own experience – nor does it feature heavily in yours. Arguing about a subjective perception of events isn’t helpful – because we choose our experience, and have no obligation to choose what someone else has chosen. Facts are facts – and I have learned caution, even there; very little of what we share with each other has anything at all to do with ‘facts’. Thoughts are not facts. Emotions are not facts. Values are not facts. Narratives of experiences are not facts. Memories are not facts. Each of those things are entirely subjective, and mostly pretty made up. We are attached to our own, sometimes to the point of being completely irrational about holding on to the ‘rightness’ of them without regard to the pain we cause others.
One beautiful moment, so many ways to enjoy it.
Today is a lovely morning, from my perspective, in spite of pain. Today is a good day to live my experience awake, aware, and mindfully. Today is a good day to show the world kindness – because I can, and it’s simply a better way to enjoy my experience. Today is a good day to brush off the things that distract me from love, with an understanding smile; we are each so very human. Today is a good day to be the change.
Evening Light 