I’m hesitant to declare which pain can score the highest on the scales of agony. Precarious scales lined up to weigh the diciest of emotions, each curved disk angled to measure the immeasurable. I’m sure comparing pain is like comparing sin and declaring that this particular sin is much more heinous than the other. Murder, Lying, Adultery, Theft, it seems considerably crueler to violently plunge a knife into someone’s heart than it is to lie that you didn’t take out the trash when you were supposed to. Such is the comparison of pain. That lump lodged firmly in your throat, refusing to dislodge no matter how much you swallow, threatening to either erupt into blinding anger or melt you into a mass of mortification and discomfiture.
Psychologists postulate that one of the downsides of growing up a whiz kid, the best at your primary or high school, the best at your local church choir, oohs and aahs from your parents, heaps of praises and encouragement, and consistent wins, is that you will not be able to handle disappointment. It burns, acutely, more so because it is completely foreign to you, therefore you haven’t the faintest idea how to handle it. Its awkwardness lingers on, unfamiliar on the skin, refusing to leave until you face it. The pain of disappointment is undoubtedly borne from expectation. I suppose that is where the age-old adage came from, he who expects nothing is never disappointed.
When I was in primary school, I won prices from grade one to grade seven, consistently, never a prize giving day where my mother would not run up to the podium with beaming smiles and ready for kodak moments with the camera man. High school, particularly ZJC level, was a whole new ballgame, they mixed the best of the best countrywide and I was lost at sea. I remember acutely, the painful speech my mother gave me, one about knowing why you came to school in the first place and not getting carried away. I think perhaps she struggled to process disappointment more than I did. Even as adults, an application for a masters position, a scholarship, a job opening, nothing dulls the pain, its fresher with every rejection.
It’s often got me thinking about the popularity of LinkedIn. LindkedIn, for all its pluses and connections seems like a real-life scoreboard in the world of life’s accomplishments. Look how well im doing, disappointment isn’t knocking me down as hard. Sometimes its premise is helpful, some individuals show their raw side, but hardly without any positives. On that app, and in life generally, anyone who posts a painful story of disappointment, does so only after they have won. That perhaps, is very telling of the nature of disappointment, its too sore to relay before a win soothes it away.
I have always spoken about the pain of regret, I am convinced it is greater than the pain of disappointment. In simpler terms, it is better to shoot your shot and miss than it is to not say anything and thus, never know. The pain of what ifs, the pain of what could have beens, the pain of hope, of contemplating that MAYBE it could have worked out. My theory is largely derived from an experience in Bon Marche Belgravia. I was in college, busy shopping for snacks to take me through exam time, when I turned a corner in an aisle and quite literally , had my breath taken away. I mean the man was a sight to behold. I stood transfixed and just stared, and he stared back, PAUSE WORLD , and thus began the game of cat and mouse in between the aisles, we meet again, one smiles, the other smiles back, no one initiated verbal communication. Perhaps if either of us had indeed said SOMETHING, "hie," "I know you from somewhere," "you look familiar," SOMETHING, ANYTHING. I suppose we will never know. I learnt my lesson, and am now a firm advocate of saying something, if I die I die, but at least I will know. The pain of regret, definitely more acute than the pain of disappointment.
Closely linked to it is probably the pain of unrequited love, it is greatly felt because unlike with regret, you have expressed your feelings, unlike with disappointment where you accept and struggle to move on? You continue to soak and wallow in your feelings. They continue to hold you hostage whilst you most likely continue to constantly be reminded with each day that you cannot have that which you desire and seek because of one reason or the other. I have written many times, about the pain of grief and loss, the only thing I have left to say is that it is a simply a pain you learn to live with. Like an uninvited bedfellow, it shifts and finds its place beside you, you roll over to accommodate them, because they are never leaving. Sure, sometimes you push them to the edge of the bed but they remain nonetheless, taunting you with their presence.
No one can ever adequately prepare you for growing pains, no matter how much we wish to steel ourselves or cushion the fall. I suppose the result of growing pains experienced over a lifetime is the erecting of walls so high and so thick, they are virtually impenetrable. Sometimes the glory is in the walls plummeting down, brick after satisfying brick, in cracks and tumbles, blocks and satisfying chunks, with thankful heaves and sighs that someone out there has gotten right, what your soul so loudly and earnestly craved.
Comments