Pain Essay, Research Paper

Pain, an acute mental or emotional discomfort, is experienced by

everyone many times during the course of his or her lives. This

discomfort to a person may be the result of slipping on a patch of ice

on the sidewalk, or may be the result of working hard on ones homework.

Whatever the cause, precautions can be taken to avoid pain, like wearing

a helmet while bicycling, but painful situations pop up all the time.

Pain during the coarse of ones life is inevitable. Misery, mental

suffering or extreme bodily suffering or discomfort: extreme

unhappiness, may not be present for everyone, and is more easily avoided

than pain. Misery usually occurs when many things go wrong, or if one

major thing in someone s life goes wrong. These things are meaningful

and the misery involved is optional. An example of this could be someone

who goes to school, but doesn t work, fails, and consequently ends up

without a job, and feels miserable. This situation could have been

avoided, if the person had worked hard at school. This demonstrates the

fact that misery can be due to major losses or failures. Therefore even

though insignificant causes of pain are inevitable, the things that mean

the most can be maintained, and misery is optional.

Pain can in some ways be prevented, with the help of preventative

measures like wearing a seat belt in a car, a wearing a helmet and pads

before going out biking. Even though these measures are applied, there

are some things that cannot be controlled, and luck also plays a factor

in a person encountering pain. First of all, every time a person goes

outside there is a chance that an accident will occur. If someone looses

control of their car on black ice, hits a tree and gets injured it

really is not their fault. One could say that this could be avoided by

not driving in winter, but this isn t possible. People are active, and

as long as they are active there is always an element of risk involved.

If one makes dinner they may get burned, but food is needed for the

person s survival. People take risks all the time and pain is somewhat

inevitable at different degrees. Some people have a high tolerance for

pain and seem to take more risks. Others are more cautious, but the

element of pain is always a factor.

Generally people are more susceptible to smaller sources of pain,

because they take small risks, however people are more careful when

confronted with serious pain, like the fact that someone may wear a

safety belt for protection, because of the potential severity of a car

crash, but do not wear a helmet if he or she goes bicycling in a park.

This is the idea behind misery being optional. Misery is extreme bodily

injury or extreme mental suffering, or unhappiness. Small risks are

always taken, but big ones aren t because of their consequences. In this

sense misery can be avoided, at least physically. As for mental

suffering this usually occurs when something that means a lot to someone

goes wrong or sometimes never materializes. A good example of this would

be the example of someone who felt miserable because they dropped out of

school and ended up jobless. To avoid this misery they could have stayed

in school. In this case the person had an option, but it would have

meant working hard and enduring some pain or discomfort. Therefore this

example demonstrates the idea that misery was optional, the person could

have stayed at school. But pain must be felt in order to avoid misery.

In this case the person works and feels some discomfort in school, but

avoid misery which is a more severe type of pain.

Pain has to be endured to avoid certain types of misery, but misery can be present because of other causes that have nothing to do with pain. An

example of this would be jealousy, but this has to do with the person.

One chooses whether he or she is jealous and there again there is an

option. During one s life time pain is inevitable because of it s

unpredictability, but because of this it does not interfere with

happiness, if it did many people would be miserable, it is not a big

deal. Because misery is due to the wrong turning of something that means

a lot to a person, the magnitude is great. These meaningful things

however can be keep on the right path because they are big, and need

planning (unlike unpredictable painful situations). This provides people

with a chance to put their priorities straight and choose whether or

not, in the long term, if they want to be miserable.