My sister and I went hiking last week. Believe me when I say it is a struggle to find any sort of uphill trail in Illinois, the land of the flat. But we drove over an hour to a small state park in the western part of the state, and we hiked. And it was hard. The air was sticky and we were soon sweaty and tired and overall uncomfortable. But there were some amazing views, up and over the tops of the trees and the long green winding river. I would have called the hike worth it, despite the sore muscles and the damp hair and the aching feet. My sister may have disagreed.
My point to all this (and I do have one) is that there is very little in life that does not cause some small amount of pain. Whether this pain comes in the form of mental exertion, emotional wounds, or just plain physical exhaustion is insubstantial. Just as my excursion with my sister caused us both an amount of physical pain (very small comparatively, I think), just as reading really good books gives me a pang of empathy, just as playing music can sometimes drive me to tears for all of the things I cannot portray, every good thing in life holds within it pain as well as pleasure.
I think that the best place to see this play out is in our relationships with each other. We are humans, we are communal beings, and we crave human contact. Even the most introverted of people reach out for connection by reading, watching television or blogging. I have had the privilege to live in close proximity with some of my favorite people for extended periods of time at college. It’s one of the best experiences I’ve ever had, but it also hurts. Humans are messy things. We hurt each other for a variety of different reasons, and oftentimes without meaning to do so. I don’t think anyone who has truly loved another person can deny also being hurt by that person. It’s the nature of love to open us up to pain.
To turn to my sphere of expertise, all good books have some measure of darkness in them. And in some of the greatest novels and plays and works of poetry there is very little light at all. I think of Dostoyevsky, Dickens, Hugo. How dark is the picture of Raskolnikov in "Crime and Punishment," and with how little redemption at the end! Pain is a part of human nature, and of nature itself, and therefore all the great novelists have documented it in all of its depravity. Reading a novel like "Les Miserables" is eye-opening, life-changing, but it is also deeply depressing.
However, please never think that I am saying that none of these things are worthwhile. That life is not worthwhile. Pain is a part of life, but if we take it in the right way it encourages us to grow as much as or more than happiness or contentment do. With the small jealousies and pettinesses of friendship come the joy and peace of being truly with another person. With the very true picture of human depravity depicted in great novels come the sentences that stop your heart, the characters that give you hope for society. And this, really, is the entire point of life. We take the joy with the pain and the fact that we can feel lets us know that we are really alive.
