Life hurts. This is the inescapable truth that accompanies living. However, pain does not equate to the living being futile. On the contrary, it can highlight the uplifting moments and strengthen the proximity and durability of valuable relationships. Whether the pain of life is physical or mental, whether it is trivial or life-altering, it is bearable and endurable. This was one of the many takeaways I have carried with me since seeing an on-campus, student-produced production of "Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries."
This one hundred minute production follows the not-quite-love story of Kayleen and Doug from the ages of eight to thirty-eight. Throughout this thirty year time period, their relationship grows stronger and then more distant as their paths continually cross.
The reasons for their reunions vary but are often based on some form of pain. A stomach ailment, being struck by lightning, a suicide attempt. Quite consistently, when the two characters encountered one another, one was visibly hurt while the other was injured in a much more quiet way.
Oftentimes, if a physically hurt person was placed next to a mentally ill person, people are more apt to pity and find validity in the pain of the physically hurt. This is not to take away the pain of those who are not able-bodied, but there is validity in emotional pain. Simply because hurt is not seen does not mean that it does not exist. It does not mean that it is not real.
Within the production, the reasons for Doug’s pain were often physical and explicitly stated. Meanwhile, Kayleen suffered much more quietly inside of her head. One was not necessarily more hurt than the other or in more pain or more justified in feeling sorry the circumstances they, as characters, found themselves in.
However, in real life outside of the made-up theatrical world, pain that is not physical is regarded as inconsequential. Here is what I think though: no one has a monopoly on pain. Everyone has it.
There are certainly always going to be people in the world who are suffering more than you, but that does not make emotional pain invalid. That is like believing that your happiness is worthless because someone else in the world is happier. Everyone has skeletons in their closet and life hurts. It does not leave anyone unscathed, but finding people to hold onto eases injury.
