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Jason Tonley from Kaiser Permanente in LA, reminded me of this old beauty from Kahlil Gibran’s classic The Prophet. Now this stuff is written by a Lebanese American artist and poet, who was raised in poverty without formal education but with a gambling father who was jailed. After being evicted, his mum took him and his sisters and brother to Boston, where at 12 and a half, he started school. He is now most famous for writing ‘The Prophet’, from which this excerpt is taken, but he did lots of other impressive things too. He is the third best-selling poet of all time (behind Shakespeare & Lao-Tzu according to Wikipedia). The Prophet is considered officially as a work of inspirational fiction, although I imagine there are many who consider it to be inspirational fact. So, Kahlil Gibran had no training in pain apart from, I imagine, substantial personal experience. Have a read of what he wrote and you make the call – is it inspired, prophetic, helpful? Is it defensible on scientific grounds, is it appropriate for patients, should it be on your clinic wall? Or is it wet, gratuitous and unhelpful? Is it refuted by research, is it offensive to patients, should it be avoided at all costs? Is there a precious diamond amongst the rough? Is the whole thing gold. Is there something that really resonates with you? Why? Regardless of your answers to these, I suspect that your life will be just slightly better if you take a little while to read it and then think about it. Really think about it. Go on. Don’t rush off – as the grandfather of a good friend said when faced with the reality of a phone that does not have to be plugged into a wall – ‘Life is not that urgent’.
On Pain
By Kahlil Gibran
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.
if he is talking about physical pain (as opposed to emotional pain) this is a big crock of doo doo. he is saying only through suffering can one get well.
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Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
Zen Aphorism
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I like it. He describes pain as something ‘normal’ like joy and we should accept pain, another miracle of life, go through the rough times with confidence of getting better. Instead of pushing through pain, ignoring it and not letting the body heal and do its job in the first instance.
It might not be appropriate for people who already suffer from central sensitisation but it may prevent from that development. I’m impressed by Gibran’s opinion that pain is self chosen. That is quite an outstanding observation.
Lucy, do you believe that one will get over emotional pain by suffering but not over physical pain with the same strategy? Aren’t those two pains similar if not the same when it comes to central processing?
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Lucy Reply:
August 26th, 2011 at 12:27 pm
Not all physical pain is a means to an end. For some of us with chronic pain there is no “getting through it” to get to the other side- the pain is just the pain we have to accept and deal with. To propose that by experiencing the pain will somehow be transformed and healed is inaccurate and inappropriate in this context.
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Eva Reply:
August 29th, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Dear Lucy,
I am very sorry if I offended you. You are right, I don’t know what you are going through and if you felt I was suggesting you simply ‘had to go through it’ it was very inappropriate and inaccurate. I’m wishing you all the best.
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Lucy Reply:
August 30th, 2011 at 12:16 am
thank you. i was not offended, but i just felt compelled to illuminate the fact that for some people pain is just pain, not an indicator of a period of healing. and this makes pain quite a complicated factor of daily living. living with daily pain and the knowledge that there is little change going to occur with time makes pain quite a different experience to that of dealing with the temporary pain of injury. When Gibran says
“[pain is] the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self”
the implication for the person with chronic pain with no apparent cause is that we are inherently broken, and this is a very dangerous and flawed message to try to reconcile.
I am with Anon up above. Kahlil views pain as normal and with gifts and lessons like any other pain. I agree that once central sensitisation has evolved it may not work, but again isn’t the treatment for CS sort of restoring awareness? I think that is what the poet is saying. Awareness to ones self, one’s body parts, life, emotions makes all the difference at times. Do a small decidedly non scientific experiment.
Sit with one of your pains, perhaps just a small one without making a move to alleviate it. Witness it. As an observer, not a judge. It is powerful.
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Lucy Reply:
August 26th, 2011 at 1:06 pm
How about you try the above experiment for 16 years, then get back to me. I have a lot of time to witness it, observe it. I choose not to accept that I am to blame for the presence of the pain. But I accept the pain. My disagreement with Gibran is that I don’t feel it is “self chosen” – I don’t choose to be in pain. Pain is not a spiritual condition that makes me stronger and more grateful.
And I am talking about chronic physical pain. His thoughts may better apply to emotional pain such as grief – for that you do have to go through it to get past it.
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I’ve got a slightly different take. The verses don’t mention ‘suffering’ which i think is quite different to ‘pain’.
In fact, in some ways the poem provides a means by which to avoid suffering by, knowing pain, keeping “your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life”, seeing pain for a wondrous thing and accepting the ‘seasons of your heart’.
One just has to peruse the writings on this blog to begin to see the wonder and majesty of our brains and bodies; their ability to detect and respond to threat and self heal as necessary.
My vote is for ‘prophetic’.
The true beauty of poetry of course is that it only truly means what it means to you, as an individual – there is nor right or wrong interpretation.
At the risk of sounding a bit “new agey” ‘d like to think that there is a place for philosophy or poetry in the modern pursuit of scientific discoveries.
I read with interest recently, about Oliver Wendell Holmes Snr. who was both a physician of some note in his time (a reformer who suggested the, at the time controversial, idea that doctors were carrying Puerperal fever between patients on their hands) as well as a well known author and poet; a member of the “Fireside Poets”.
Is there still a place in our modern, increasingly dichotomous world for “Physician – Poets”?? (Limericks included!!)
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I am a qualified and very experienced psychotherapist, as well as a practising acupuncturist and tactile therapist. At the age of 60 I have come to the realisation again, which I first encountered when training at the Tavistock Institute in London, that Freud was and, still is correct in saying that accidents happen for a psychological/psychosocial reason(s). If one views pain as an accident in the bio-mechanical/muscular-skeletal structures of the body, then the poet is correct in their assertions about pain.
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Thanks you for raising such an important issue.
First of all, I believe it would be very wise for scientific research to listen more often to personal experience and even more when the object of research concerns the experience of pain.
I believe that the discussion here crosses some cultural issues about the understanding of our nature, and the meaning of pain. I think there are two important issues at stake: first the issue of ‘resisting’ versus ‘accepting’ the pain and then the dichotomy between ‘physical’ and ‘emotional’ pain.
In order to reflect about some of the questions raised here I will start by my personal experience.
Some years ago I had an accident. I fell from 6 meters, I broke both of my arms, I could not use them during a couple of months, I underwent several operations and I had to assist to daily physiotherapy during two years. During this period I could explore pain, live the pain, inhabit it and some how many insight came from this experience. One of them was precisely the importance for my healing process to have the time, space and peace to concentrate on my pain. Not masochist purpose was involved in this need, at the moment there was not purpose at all, only the need to withdraw myself and to concentrate. Actually it was very annoying for me the continuous efforts of my physiotherapist to distract me of the pain caused by the exercises, I just wanted to breath and be there, with the pain. Certainly some times his chitchat was useful; I arrived to go away from the pain and engage in his conversation.
It was then when my question about ‘going away from’ versus ‘accepting’ the pain as coping strategies emerged.
Years later, when I began my PhD on the relationship between body awareness and pain, I realised how much emphasis have been put in the last 20 years the medical policies to eradicating pain and this urge of escaping from pain is some how supported by common sense, nobody wants to feel pain, therefore we escape before we can even make sense of it. We are taught that pain is a bad thing that one should escape from, but we are never taught about tools to accept it and live it, as in other cultures do.
I don’t think that the point is going around looking for pain, but if it is there, “and you would accept the seasons of your heart” you might take out something from it. In fact, there is scientific evidence that goes in that direction (see the work of Lance M McCracken on chronic pain and acceptance). You might not reduce the intensity of the pain but you can remove other emotions that go with it such as fear, anxiety or anger, which would allow you to deal with the situation in a better way.
Regarding the dichotomy between ‘physical’ versus ‘emotional’, I am not so sure that is that easy to draw a clear line between those kinds of experiences, persistent noxious stimuli can certainly alter your emotional system, and grief or stress can be eventually expressed in chronic physical pain or some forms of paralyzes (see “Vivre sans la douleur” of Nicolas Danzinger).
Well, all that to say that I vote for Kahlil Gibran as a prophet!
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All interesting and pertinent points. Of course we all read this with our own filters, experiences, views, judgments, biases etc. Who knows what he means by ‘pain’ except himself? Who knows what someone else’s pain is? We can only listen (and really hear) and observe (look and really see).
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great discussion.
My guess is the Kahlil is sharing his experience of pain.
Even though we typically believe that no one can understand our pain and that our pain experience is unique, we also believe that the manner in which we have come through pain will work for everyone else. Did he have the awareness and wisdom to see through this ego-created view?
To the ‘regarding of emotional and physical pain as different things’, I wonder whether our systems and organism really care about, or differentiate responses and outputs based the origin of the pain. Once it has been there for a while, do the protective responses and maladaptive ‘autonomic’ outputs differ all that much depending on the origin of the pain? if they don’t, that would make some sense for how treatments typically considered to help psychic pain can help those with pain arising after physical injury, and vice versa.
I know pain is much more complex than this, however I also think the best way to do our best to know pain is to be able to gain a deeper awareness of it from many perspectives.
One last thought…it’s interesting that no one here has remarked on Kahlil’s words “guided by the tender hand of the Unseen”, and “His own sacred tears”. It sounds like Kahlil either started with the belief that God has a role in everything, or that there were aspects of the experience and making it through pain that he did not understand … so therefore they must be guided by a force that exists at least partially outside of ourself.
My vote is for Prophet – one who has gained a deep awareness of self, and how that self is connected to the world.
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My vote is for prophetic. Both my research and my personal experience bear this out as good advice on the physical and psychological level. Pain is a stress, and much of managing pain is about stress response. To this extent, one does have a choice. As my rowing coach reminds me when facing competition: you have to monitor the interior dialogue in response to the stress, mind the coaching-queues you tell yourself. Interestingly enough, one of my children is being seen by a pediatric GI at Boston’s Children’s Hospital; the practice employs a psychologist who uses cognitive behavioral therapy and bio-feedback to help patients with everything from acid reflux to Krone’s disease manage their pain.
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Pain (C.R.P.S)
Reverberating down through my body
waiting to discharge itself
like needles exploding
causing an assault
That I find hard
brutal upon my foot
that has lost all senses
dose not resonate with myself.
To be honest I stopped writing poetry during having had a CRPS experience, as it made me more depressed.
Now looking back now and recovered maybe it help.
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I know this is an old post, but I came across this quote today, attributed to Jim Morrison, that reminded me of the conversation on this post. Not sure what to make of it, actually. Plus, he killed himself with pain altering substances, so did he really know what he was talking about?
“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”
– Jim Morrison
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