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Painful Thoughts of Bugs Bunny and Other Smart Remarkers
Pain is what you don’t expect. Surprise!
Surprise can be painful; pain is always surprising.
Pain is what you anticipate and anticipate and anticipate.
Didn’t Billy Shakespeare say, “Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once.” I guess that means cowards tend to allow their imaginations to get the best of them. Valiant people must be deeply into avoidance in order to survive.
Relief comes from finding out that what you anticipated isn’t as bad as you expected.
Pain is all in your head.
Wait…
Pain is all in your body.
OK, pain is everywhere in your body and your head, it’s just that some pains are more extreme than other pains, so the body does a kind of prioitizing—the most resounding pain is the pain you have to deal with to the exclusion of all other pecking-order pains. The tiniest pain gets the least attention, but is the tiniest pain always the least important pain?
Level of pain does not seem to have much to do with degree of danger. A hangnail can be excruciating, but how often is it life-threatening?
“He died of hangnail pain, poor S.O.B.”
As Bugs Bunny once said, “Pain hurts!”
Why will I do anything to avoid pain, even if that specific pain has little to do with degree of danger?
Walking barefoot across loose gravel is enormously painful, but will it kill me?
“He died of barefoot gravel-walking, poor S.O.B.”
Since this whole subject is painful, I think I’ll change the subject.
Avoidance can be a great pain-manager.
For me, it’s probably the only pain-manager.
Avoidance is a way of life, and it can work wonders, especially when you find it impossible to deal with the reality of things.
I recommend avoidance whenever possible.
I never recommend pain
© Jim Reed 2014 A.D.