While packing my things I found this quotation that I had written down. Thought it'd be good fodder for discussion.
Yes, this is the same Jim Morrison of the rock group The Doors.
As I read (and re-read) this quotation I can see that Morrison was talking about emotional and not physical pain. The pain that nearly everyone of us carries inside. Whatever that pain may be. From loss, abuse, or whatever. There are all kinds of pain for all kinds of people.
Does this mean that everyone has some kind of pain going on inside them? Well I did say nearly everyone. There may be a few token human beings on this planet that haven't experienced it or have managed to find a way to get over whatever pain that they've been feeling.
Morrison talks about pain being something that we carry, ("... like a radio" a not so surprising analogy coming from a musican/poet). We become stronger, I believe & from personal experience, from surviving the pain(s) that we feel. I've also learned that no pain is forever, if purged or accepted enough to go on with our lives. from that we get our inner strengths. The ability to face yet another crisis or situation that will be painful to go through. It's a part of life, many times unexpected and unavoidable. But it can be survived.
Your own reality. Indeed, our life's experiences create our own realities. Our joys, our pains, our fears, our hopes all of these make up part of how we see life. I've shared some bits and pieces of my life with various people. For some, they nod and relate to the experience (whatever it may have been), others may shake their heads in disbelief and comment on how surreal it seems. This tells me that my reality may or may not be theirs. My pains are my own but they may have been experienced by others in their own ways. Some have survived, some have survived but not wholly intact, some did not survive at all and took their own lives because they believed that the pain was just too much to bear/carry. How sad. Sad, because in my experience it's simply just not true. Those of you who have lived through your own know what I'm talking about.
I find Morrison's comparisons of death and pain interesting. Particularly since in many ways (from his life and the hard way he lived it) he was seeking death. He sang about it, sang about the pain that's inside of him. His famous scream(s) during certian songs (i.e. "When The Music's Over" was an expression of the pain he felt inside. It's why he considered death to be a friend. A means to end the pain that he was carrying inside of him.
On that point I don't agree with him. While death is an end to pain it's an end to all things that make up our lives, our realities and thus not a friend at all.
For myself, quitting drinking (and using drugs) was a major step in my journey to rid myself of the pains I carried since childhood and my early adult years. I'm now 44 yrs old and because I cleared my head when I was 27 of such mind numbing inebriations I had no choice but to feel the pain that I unknowingly buried from my alcoholism. All of it came up and I thought I was going to die. Oh man. But now most of it (not all of it) has been dealt with and either accepted or simply removed from within me. This has indeed made me a better person because I'm not lashing out at anyone anymore as an ill-conceived means of self-expression. I still get frustrated/angry, I still lose my temper but it's at the "now" not the "then". But even then those occurrances are few and far between.
Going through the pain, experiencing it like when I should have as it happened helped me grow inside and be a better person. The best way I could describe it is like; looking down a long dark hallway full of doors that lead to rooms. Behind each door was a specific pain that I had denied myself. By opening one door at a time, and going inside and taking a hard-look at whatever that pain was/is and dealing with it I was able to open the shutters of the windows and let in the light and clear it out, leaving the room and the door wide open and going down the hall to the next one.
It's a long process but I have opened many doors but have more to go. Yet the experience of opening each makes me a little braver to open the next one. Some of the doors I've opened but shut closed again because at that moment in time I wasn't ready to deal with it. Eventually I will be.
Eventually that dark hallway in the corridors of my mind will no longer be dark, and my life all the more the richer.
I'm not asking anyone to post their own particular private pain(s). They are just that... private, personal and a part of us. Do not give a name to your pains, but I would like to ask your perspective on living through it. Having survived it. What insights have you gained from your experience(s). What are you doing now to alieveate your hurts (inside)? Are you using Martial Arts to "symbolically" fight it while you train? Drinking to excess like Morrison did? Talking about it with a significant other or therapist? Have you buried it so deep that it would take another tragic traumatic occurrance to bring it all back to the surface again? Are you writing a journal and cleansing your mind and heart that way? What is it like (for you) to go through this?
Yes, this is the same Jim Morrison of the rock group The Doors.
As I read (and re-read) this quotation I can see that Morrison was talking about emotional and not physical pain. The pain that nearly everyone of us carries inside. Whatever that pain may be. From loss, abuse, or whatever. There are all kinds of pain for all kinds of people.
Does this mean that everyone has some kind of pain going on inside them? Well I did say nearly everyone. There may be a few token human beings on this planet that haven't experienced it or have managed to find a way to get over whatever pain that they've been feeling.
Morrison talks about pain being something that we carry, ("... like a radio" a not so surprising analogy coming from a musican/poet). We become stronger, I believe & from personal experience, from surviving the pain(s) that we feel. I've also learned that no pain is forever, if purged or accepted enough to go on with our lives. from that we get our inner strengths. The ability to face yet another crisis or situation that will be painful to go through. It's a part of life, many times unexpected and unavoidable. But it can be survived.
Your own reality. Indeed, our life's experiences create our own realities. Our joys, our pains, our fears, our hopes all of these make up part of how we see life. I've shared some bits and pieces of my life with various people. For some, they nod and relate to the experience (whatever it may have been), others may shake their heads in disbelief and comment on how surreal it seems. This tells me that my reality may or may not be theirs. My pains are my own but they may have been experienced by others in their own ways. Some have survived, some have survived but not wholly intact, some did not survive at all and took their own lives because they believed that the pain was just too much to bear/carry. How sad. Sad, because in my experience it's simply just not true. Those of you who have lived through your own know what I'm talking about.
I find Morrison's comparisons of death and pain interesting. Particularly since in many ways (from his life and the hard way he lived it) he was seeking death. He sang about it, sang about the pain that's inside of him. His famous scream(s) during certian songs (i.e. "When The Music's Over" was an expression of the pain he felt inside. It's why he considered death to be a friend. A means to end the pain that he was carrying inside of him.
On that point I don't agree with him. While death is an end to pain it's an end to all things that make up our lives, our realities and thus not a friend at all.
For myself, quitting drinking (and using drugs) was a major step in my journey to rid myself of the pains I carried since childhood and my early adult years. I'm now 44 yrs old and because I cleared my head when I was 27 of such mind numbing inebriations I had no choice but to feel the pain that I unknowingly buried from my alcoholism. All of it came up and I thought I was going to die. Oh man. But now most of it (not all of it) has been dealt with and either accepted or simply removed from within me. This has indeed made me a better person because I'm not lashing out at anyone anymore as an ill-conceived means of self-expression. I still get frustrated/angry, I still lose my temper but it's at the "now" not the "then". But even then those occurrances are few and far between.
Going through the pain, experiencing it like when I should have as it happened helped me grow inside and be a better person. The best way I could describe it is like; looking down a long dark hallway full of doors that lead to rooms. Behind each door was a specific pain that I had denied myself. By opening one door at a time, and going inside and taking a hard-look at whatever that pain was/is and dealing with it I was able to open the shutters of the windows and let in the light and clear it out, leaving the room and the door wide open and going down the hall to the next one.
It's a long process but I have opened many doors but have more to go. Yet the experience of opening each makes me a little braver to open the next one. Some of the doors I've opened but shut closed again because at that moment in time I wasn't ready to deal with it. Eventually I will be.
Eventually that dark hallway in the corridors of my mind will no longer be dark, and my life all the more the richer.
I'm not asking anyone to post their own particular private pain(s). They are just that... private, personal and a part of us. Do not give a name to your pains, but I would like to ask your perspective on living through it. Having survived it. What insights have you gained from your experience(s). What are you doing now to alieveate your hurts (inside)? Are you using Martial Arts to "symbolically" fight it while you train? Drinking to excess like Morrison did? Talking about it with a significant other or therapist? Have you buried it so deep that it would take another tragic traumatic occurrance to bring it all back to the surface again? Are you writing a journal and cleansing your mind and heart that way? What is it like (for you) to go through this?
