FIRST THE PAIN AND THEN THE PLEASURE

No one likes to be in pain. No one likes to suffer, at least no sane person does. The masochists among us may seem to enjoy pain, even seek it out. But they have obviously a screw loose. Pain and suffering prevent us from fully being the person God created us to be. Perhaps we will never fully become that person as it seems that pain and suffering are part and parcel of this life on earth.

On the other hand it is precisely because we do suffer, that we are in pain – physical, spiritual, emotional – at many times in our lives that we know what it means to be fully alive when that pain and suffering passes, but not before. That truth would not seem so, but it is. We cannot know true pleasure, true joy, before we first know suffering and pain.

That is the truth that lies inside the parable of Adam and Eve. As the story goes, God placed them in paradise, the Garden of Eden, where they knew no pain or suffering. It was like being in heaven on earth. But they did not know so. They did not know what they had living there in paradise. It was only after they had sinned and then began to suffer that they fully understood what they had had and now no longer had. It was a difficult lesson to learn.

It is a difficult lesson to learn and we all have to learn it the hard way. There is no other way. The further truth is is that we like it that way – at least after we have learned that truth the hard way, the way of pain and suffering. All we need do is think about those times when we have been in great pain. It matters not what that pain was. Once that pain, that suffering, passed, we experienced the great pleasure that its passing produced. It is as if we never knew such pleasure now that the pain is gone.

That is not to say that we hope to be in pain, to suffer, just so that we can experience joy and pleasure, or at least to know exactly what true joy and true pleasure really is. Only a fool has such hopes. It is to say, however, that we need not live in fear when pain and suffering come our way, as it always does. We know from experience that the pleasure and joy that will follow will eventually outweigh the suffering we endured.

That does not mean that the promise of the joy and pleasure to come will make the present suffering any less painful. It will not. It is simply to say that we can never fully   understand what joy and pleasure is all about unless it has been absent in our lives through pain and suffering.

The corollary of this is the lesson from Adam and Eve. They did not know what they had when they were living a fully-pleasurable and joy-filled life. They took it for granted and suffered the consequences. When pain and suffering are absent from our lives, we, too, often take it for granted and not give thanks for what we now have because when pain returns, it will seem worse than it is. We need to enjoy the pleasure. We earned it!