People

Victory and Pain

by Terry Barlow
06/19/19
For Sale
Author requests article critique

  Message Writer
  Hire Writer

Tweet

Just as loneliness tends to intensify physical or emotional pain, so does a sense of defeat in daily life. Conversely, a sense of victory or triumph can ease that same pain or even seem to erase it altogether. What I am about to describe goes beyond the mere effect of adrenaline, as powerful as that is.

A baseball player slid into home plate face first scoring the winning run in the final inning. Though he scraped his cheek in the dirt and drew blood, he barely noticed the pain in his excitement. However had the umpire called him out at home plate and had his team lost because of it, he would have felt the throbbing pain more acutely. As it actually happened, he wore his wound like a badge of honor.  To have sustained that wound, and to suffer its lingering effects were embraced as privileges. Had he been a split second slower, though, he would’ve gone on to drag his pain like a heavy chain, as something for which he felt an associated shame.

So in everyday life, wounds sustained in a worthy cause and the pain that flows from them are worn and felt in an entirely different way than that which is perceived to be in vain.