Rose Bush Reality

You will take your journey home, as you always do, but today you will meet something along the way that will cause anger and frustration. You will meet a sign that simply signifies a bridge closing. Unable to see what lies ahead, and vexed by what has stopped your intended path, you now must choose a different way home due to the inconvenience. In life we continually struggle, meeting encumbrances leading us astray from what we call home. Each pause in our journey we face causes us pain, and most of the time we do not have the capability to see the purpose of it.

If you uncontrollably grimace when you hear of pain, blame society for your skewed perception. Society has led us to find all ways we can avoid the inevitable. Society tells us to always avoid pain. If you believe the erroneous lies they sell, you are sadly mistaken, as pain exists as an ever-present and subjective matter on its own. Each person defines pain differently as pain evolves by experience and transpires as qualia. Think as Descartes would. Because you perceive pain, the pain will always prevail. Then follows the question: why does pain exist? The answer: pain harbors life. Pretend for a moment that the sign you approached earlier had not been there. You would haphazardly drive over the broken bridge to your own death. Without a sign or pain, we would constantly drive ourselves to demise. Struggles draw the lines between life and death. Time after time our decisions lead to the frustrating obstacle of pain. We have to learn to overcome petty aggravation and accept the profuse significance of pain. Pain warns us of death, whether physical death or death of our spirit. Pain allows us to know how far parts of our journey can take us. You may wonder about the essentiality of struggle in life. Conclude your pondering by realizing through suffering we grow and learn how to love. If we only flourished and never lost, we would enfeeble the root that allows us to prosper. Through the very thing that tempts us to quit we find the vigor to move forward. When pain warns you to stop one thing, it urges you to take a different path that will lead you to your providence.

We all try our best to never come upon pain. After all, why would you want to find what impedes you? However, if we drove through life pushing on through things that we discern as difficult, we would never learn right from wrong. Pain configures our reasoning. Without pain as basic familiarity, we cannot make a decision that reflects what we’ve learned. Pain, not an inhibiter by nature, but rather a paradigm that sets our future. While many describe the pain as unsatisfactory they fail to think about what the alternative to the pain would be. Pain substitutes no warnings and blind annihilation. With everything merely a facade till we reached the final destination, we could never recall how to get there.

We gain knowledge through pain. The harrowing, but rewarding, enlightenment could not exist without the thornful process. Montaigne suggests that through knowledge we break free from custom. Without experiencing pain, without coming to a sign in the road, we are never going to find our own way home. Pain guides us so we don’t fall into the false comfort of custom. While custom comforts, we find that without pain we will never have a limitless ability to perceive.

Easily we presume a life with minimal pain as a superior one, but if you realize the incompetence of leisure you can see how pain molds your path. If you continue to make decisions without consequence, the novelty of the situation can mask the treachery of false comfort. I have experienced the pain of watching death and its unforgiving shackles on life. If anything causes pain, a loss does. But through the pain of loss, I received a gift of enlightenment, a reassurance of love, and defense from perplexity.

The experience of pain prior allows us to know touching the thorn of a rose will hurt. Pain warns and protects us as it strengthens us. Instead of measuring pain by how negatively it affects us, could we not measure it by how well it helps us learn? Why do define pain as detrimental when we benefit from it? How did pain become a negative thing when it is the primary thing to keep us on the track of destiny? Why do we say pain is bad when it is what allows us to determine bad from the good? Pain is the way we see clearly through the false reality society has made, a painless reality that seems ideal. This ideal is deemed impossible because it would mean no mistakes, no pause in the plan, and no humanity. Because man is anything but perfect.

You drive home. You look up and see a sign that warns of the bridge's closure. You turn around frustrated but knowing the new way home will lead you to find new things and most importantly, guide you away from your certain demise. The new journey home will allow you to stop and smell the roses.