Between Pleasure and Pain

We, humans, are a fragile lot. We are pleasure-hungry and pain-personified.

Since our coming into this world, we start exploring these two mysterious worlds of feeling. And, when we are grasping before the mighty sword of death, somewhere deep inside us, we are experiencing through this esoteric world of pain and pleasure. I am not qualified to make an authoritative comment on whether pain emerges out of pleasure or pleasure engenders pain. However, few things are common: both are emotive and both are intrinsic; both help us dwell into the deeper levels of consciousness by creating possibilities of intense emotional experiences for us, and both are integral to our experience as a living being on this earth.

If we are audacious enough to accept, then, we can admit that every human life on earth, one way or other, is the product of pleasure and pain. Love furnishes opportunities for pleasure and unrequited love brings pain. We live in a world of fantasies and seek pleasure in building on our delusions. However, we meet with crashing waves of sadness when our fancy world is broken down before the reality or our delusions left us alone suffering. We build expectations from others, from our dear ones, and from us too. We take pride in our friendships, our connections, and in our being special; but sometimes, we get bogged down by our own expectations and we have to eat our own words. We may keep our appearances before the world. But down deep inside us, we know that we are so humiliated by our own expectations. And, it pained us. It pained us deeply.

It does not suggest that every pleasure will lead to pain or vice-versa. But, it does advise us to be honest when it comes to scheme-of-being-human. Pleasure is our darling, and we escape the pain. But we can’t keep on experiencing pleasure forever, and can’t escape pain forever.

There is another perspective, different from the dichotomy of pleasure and pain. As we see the greater majority among us take pleasure in paining their fellow humans, in killing and hunting animals, in cutting and clearing the tree-lands, in torturing the poor, dispossessed, and minorities, in bombing the dissidents, and in cheating, defrauding the people. And we see, there are people, who take pleasure even in pain themselves. Restricting themselves not to this, they quite often play self-victim, and they keep explaining how painful, and distressful life they are going through. They keep spreading their miseries and forget the door of pleasure to come out of that. In reality, now they seek pleasure in pain.

Sometimes, our states do play the victim game in order to secure funds and sympathy from friends, and allies. Why do people play the victim card? It is because every one of us can feel what pain is. It is the best way to seek empathy and support.

We may wish to stay away from pleasure or crave it. We may wish to avoid pain or rejoice in it. But here we are, the mortal being, experiencing through the both. Pleasure and pain are integral to our experience of life.