Pain

I woke up early this morning to get ready to go to this place called Dutch Water Dreams to do some artificial bodyboarding. Basically it’s a place where they mock a wave and you bodyboard on it. Well, I woke up a little late and so I was in hurry to get ready. Now, my room at my grandparent’s home is on the top floor and on the way down there are extremely steep stairs (as you can see in the picture below).

I’m sure you can see where this is going. I quickly rushed out of my room and the moment I stepped on the stairs to go down, I tripped and slid all the way to the bottom, banging my tailbone on every step. And now my tailbone is suffering from an excruciating pain every time I stand up, sit down, lie down, or walk.

It’s quite painful, as you can probably imagine. However, I started wondering why pain is the socially accepted feeling that something is wrong. Now, most people are going to tell me, “Well Alexander, pain hurts and therefore it is considered a bad thing…” And here’s what I have to say to that. Not all pain is bad. Let’s take exercising as an example. Exercising hurts, especially in sports like running and swimming (I’m sure there are many other sports that hurt but these are the only two I’ve really done). But, even though exercising hurts, it’s a good thing to do; it’s even recommended by doctors! It’s as if the socially accepted meaning for pain is contradicting itself.

So, why did evolution have to make pain the universal message for danger? Couldn’t it have been an electric brain signal that told you something along the lines of, “Your tailbone is injured, take it easy for a while”?

Whatever the reason is, all I know is that I couldn’t go bodyboarding and instead spent the whole day doing nothing. What a thrilling day…

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