Afraid of a Little Pain, Are You?

The other day I came home from work and some of the neighbor kids were all rolling on the grass, punching and kicking and generally beating the hell out of each other.  My first instinct was to tell them to cut it out, but then, for a brief second, the boy I thought was getting the brunt of it smiled.  I realized they were just fooling around.  Sure, they were quite likely to hurt one another, but then I thought, "who cares"?

It seems to me that in this day and age, people are quite afraid of getting hurt. Today I'm just talking physical pain, but I think this may translate to emotional as well.  From the adults I meet who do one workout and quit because of the pain the next day to a new generation of children who panic when they fall down or see blood.  I get the feeling it has not always been this way.  At some point our culture has decided that it is a necessity to get rid of anything that might possibly cause us pain.  I get it when it comes to deadly diseases.  Sure, nobody wants to die from typhoid or whooping cough.  But when did we get so paranoid about germs and blood?  The removal of anything but "safe" equipment on our playgrounds and the insane amount of hand sanitizer I see being used makes me want to punch somebody.  Our kids apparently don't know how to swing, spin or see-saw without killing themselves, so we must save them by coating everything with recycled truck tires and getting rid of anything with moving parts.  I get it.  We don't want our kids to maim themselves.  But we are teaching them at a very young age that pain is something to run screaming from, that it is something to avoid at all costs, it is something to FEAR.

Many of us share stories about the "good old days" when we used to go out in the woods all day long to explore or play war.  There was no worry from our parents that we would get hurt.  Not that we wouldn't get hurt.  I would show up at home with bloodied knees, a chipped tooth, a broken collar bone and various cuts, bruises and scrapes.  But back then these things didn't really count.  It was considered completely fine to get dirty and scratched up doing who knows what, come home, eat dinner, shower and go to bed.  Pain was a part of life and there was no need to stop the presses for a scratch.  Because nobody else made a big deal out of it, neither did I.  And scraping my knee on a tree didn't keep me from climbing trees ever again.

I'm sure my broken collar bone was avoidable.  My sisters could have not thrown me into the pile of leaves.  But I LOVED being thrown into the leaf pile.  We would rake the leaves and take turns jumping into it, over and over and over again.  And one time, I landed on a rock and broke my collar bone.  The difference between then and now is that if that happened today all of a sudden there would be a ban on jumping in leaf piles.  And they would ban your older siblings from throwing you anywhere.  I just wore a sling for a couple of weeks, healed up and went back to jumping in.  (And from then on did a general sweep for large rocks that might be hiding at the bottom of the pile.)

I'm no fan of causing pain to others on purpose and I believe in listening to your body.  Some pain is just your body being tired and healing and some other pain actually means something is wrong.  I don't believe in corporal punishment, mostly because it doesn't work and because parents get more and more frustrated and hit their kids in anger and frustration, not love.  I don't look to go out and get hurt.  But I don't let the thought of pain hold me back and I don't think we should teach our kids to do so either.  How will you learn how to do the monkey bars if you're too scared to fall down?  How will you learn to skate board, climb trees, jump rope, ride a bike, swim, or play any sport if you are afraid of some pain?

So when I saw the neighbors fighting, I decided not to say anything and let them go for it.  Nobody got hurt. Well, not too badly anyway.

How Will You Know if You Can?

How about you?  Are you afraid of a little pain?

Because My Mom Says

"You can be anything you want." - Pauline Sullivan.

Although much of my early life was dictated by fear- fear of failure, of letting others down, of saying the wrong thing, of breaking rules, of not being liked, of looking stupid, and of going to Hell, I was given a great gift that carried me through.  I'm not sure if I was only told once, or if it was a repeated message in my household, but I heard the message that I was allowed to dream big.  That we had very little spending money, but that I was fully capable of going to college and being anything I wanted.  Through the fear I heard that I could keep my mind open to possibilities.

I don't know how my mother knew to pass those words on, or how she came to believe them herself, coming from even poorer circumstances, growing up in the basement of her grandparents home as a young child under the abusive, angry watch of my alcoholic grandfather in New Jersey, but somehow she heard the message and believed it.  We may have been "poor" by definition of not having a lot of extra cash on hand, but my parents had (and they still have) 5 acres of land in the woods, with a stream and a house and garden that they built on their own.  My father worked for himself in a business with his friends that they built and my Mom was able to stay home to raise us.  What strength of character allows you to dream that you can have that?  That you are not stuck with what you have been handed in this life, but can make your own choices?

I was lucky to hear that.  Because I was given many messages, and most were not positive.  We are all given some obvious, and some very sneaky messages about who we are and who we are supposed to become.  How we are supposed to behave and how much we should be allowed to have.  How big we should allow ourselves to dream.  When I was a child I was going to be a teacher or a nanny, then I would be a Counselor, then I decided that I would be a physical therapist and work with sports teams.  I had limited connection to the possibilities that existed.   As time goes on my vision expands just a little to include new things, new possibilities. In college I moved from Physical Therapist (they have to touch sweaty feet!) to therapist.  This one has stuck for quite some time.  I think it bumps up really close to my passion and purpose.  And still I think there is more for me.  I will be a therapist, and I will be great.  But I am allowing myself to dream even bigger.  A life coach?  A nutritionist?  An exercise instructor?  A public speaker?  Owner and operator of a world-famous retreat center where spiritual leaders stay and speak?  President?  Who knows. Because I can be whatever I want.  My mom says so.