Pain. It is a word that is used in many terms. The dictionary defines pain as “physical suffering or distress, as due to injury, illness, etc.” but what exactly does it mean? And why is it there? Is it just something you feel when you are sad? Or hurt? Or does it go deeper than that? Sometimes pain can get the better of us, and sometimes it cannot. It can change a person, physically and emotionally, whether it be good or bad. Even though it may seem absolutely awful, pain is actually very important for the strong, and the weak.

Pain is considered to be a gift, and a burden.  It can help shape people into who they really are, and help you to have empathy towards those who have pain. In the famous British TV show, Doctor Who, The Doctor states that, and I quote; “Pain is a gift. Without the capacity for pain we can’t feel the hurt we inflict.” This quote explains my point exactly, because without us feeling pain, we wouldn’t be able to feel compassionate towards other people who are feeling pain, and what kind of person would we be if we couldn’t feel love and empathy towards those who are less fortunate than you.

So, what can we do when we feel pain? Should we just hole it up into ourselves, letting it get worse and worse, without anyone actually knowing? No that just makes it so much worse. I would like to share a personal story of someone I know who has spent most his life keeping it in, so much so that it caused a mental illness. Towards the beginning of 8th grade, I noticed some changes in my older brother. He had many cuts, up and down his arms that I had never noticed before, and seemed to exclude himself from us. This was not usually like him, because he and I were really close, but all of a sudden he changed. My mom talked to him, but we didn’t decide to take him to a therapist until one week before Thanksgiving when he ran away. He left some time around 9 pm, and wasn’t found until almost 6am, where he was found wandering the streets, shoeless, in the rain. My parents took him to a mental hospital where he spent a little over a week, and didn’t get to spend Thanksgiving dinner with us. We hoped things would change, but he still has to take depression medicine, and still struggles with his depression. It hurts me and my family to see him in pain, but not have any idea how to help him through it, all because he keeps it all inside of him.

There are those times when you must fight the pain on your own, but even if you may seem alone, it doesn’t mean you just give up. A character from the TV show, Supernatural says, “Honestly, I think the world’s going to end bloody. But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight. We do have choices. I choose to go down swingin.” (Dean Winchester) What he is explaining is that even though there are trials and there is pain in this life, it doesn’t mean that you just give up all hope. You get back up again and work hard to get it right, and fight through the pain, not against it. So even though things seem hard, and people feel like the pain is too much to handle, there still is hope, and you fight pull through it all.

In conclusion, you must look at pain in a positive point of view, because if all you do is keep it to yourself, and never tell anyone, it could cause more pain for you and family members. And even though some of the pain you feel is very inevitable, sometimes you are the cause of your own suffering. So you must be careful to what you do, and how you react to your own pain, because there is always hope, and even though it may seem hard, you must stay optimistic, because there will always be a light at the end of the tunnel, you just have to endure through the dark to get to the light.