When Pain is "Good"; Pain As Drive and Reality -- The Rubinshteinic Approach to Pain
Updated: Feb 21
Pain, Loss and Acceptance
As life went on, along with the physical pain I failed to cure (back pain, neck pain, emotional pain, and so on), it seems that I became almost immune to the effects of pain. I will not give you any specific examples, but let's just say that I am quick to anger, especially when I do something like easily and numerously lose in a game.
I never liked losing, because losing means there is no advancement. Without advancement, there is no productivity, and without it, I am just wasting my time. I despise wasting my time, like I despise killing my time.
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As I failed to cure my various physical pains, they became a common reality I gradually taught myself to accept.
For the "common" person, these pains are very bothersome. For me, I almost "lost" the ability to care. This is related to the article where I said that apathy is, in some way, a strength. The more you don't care about something that could've otherwise been bothersome, the more mental resistance you develop against it. Hence the importance, of not being triggered by every single thing.
My Business Partnership With Pain
It was one day back in high school, when a teacher asked me, an important question in class, unrelated to the material: "Do you dislike the noise in the class?" I answered, Of course I do. Then, they asked, So why am I not doing anything against it? I answered, Because I taught myself to accept it.
The entire class laughed, because they thought I was joking.
It was then I realized the world has no desire to understand me. It was one of the times the world forsaken me. It was one of the reasons I became anti-villainous. Nowadays, I'd make them all suffer if I was Tomasio. But I was a Tom, and Tom I buried a long time ago.
And here I am, with ever-so tense muscles across my body, after a game I played that made me furious, suffering under the regular doses of physical pain, enhanced by my anger. It seems I can't play any fighting game anymore, because all I want to do is win, and watch my opponent be overwhelmed by my might.
But the wisdom of fighting games teaches us to ignore our emotions, and be passionate unemotionally.
Almost each part of my body is tense and in pain aside from the legs, and yet, I don't really care. This pain is something that happens in the background; not something that is related to the so-called "higher-self". That is also what I taught myself when I used to exercise -- it's just pain, it's just unease, just agony. There is no reason to be so obsessive about seeking as much comfort as possible. For the seeking of comfort, and dependency on it, makes one's mind unnecessarily weaker.
And I, I refuse to be weak. And adversity, to a degree, is like a medicine to the mind.
Someone I know is like this -- far from ascetic, and always wants me to feel comfortable, without any unease whatsoever. They did not know, empirically, of the realizations I attained as a result of my pain. It's simply because they didn't have that pain in their lives. Very few people seem to know how it's like feeling pain for every waking moment for more than 10, 15 years. Very few know of my suffering, and I seek no mercy for it is largely impractical.
Remember that pain is a great teacher. I do not fear what is helpful for me to learn, to grow. I do not enjoy it. It is nothing more than a teacher to me, an educational associate. Pain... is a carrier of insight. And once you get used to it, your array of opportunities can grow further.
When I see people in wheelchairs, for example, I adore them for not complaining about back pain. This nightmare of a pain began in me simply because I sat most of my childhood and wasn't very physically active.
And still, no matter how many pills I take, how many exercises I try to do, the pain is there, laughing at my incompetence to get rid of it. It is like a master teaching me in accordance to sith methodology. In accordance to ruthlessness, mercilessness and unforgiveness. I grew in accordance to the pain whose authority influenced my mentality, made me stronger and ruthless myself.
Pain's most important lesson is -- endure as much as you can, until the inevitable arrives. Through endurance, we get far stronger. "Endure as much as you can, so you can write as many articles as possible, before leaving this world", is what my pain tells me. With this pain, I'm building an empire.
The pain you feel, is but a reminder that you too are breakable; make sure that you do not give up to pain's temptation, if you wish to leave as big a legacy as possible. Breakability is a matter of how much you're willing to be weak. To submit. To admit defeat. It depends on you, and on your willingness to relent.
As I wrote in an article about suicide -- one of the reasons people seek suicide, is to end their suffering. Death, so it appears to me, is the only solution to end my over-a-decade long period of physical torment. However, I will not kill myself, for I accepted pain as a reality. And with pain, I will overcome many mental challenges. With it, I mentally survive the very fact that my country is prone to wars, while I can still remain calm during such military conflicts.
I have a mission. I will fulfill my mission. End of story.
Pain is good, not because it is enjoyable, not because it makes you feel manly in contrast to others. Pain shows us the potential, hidden within us, to endure the many issues we may face throughout life.
By abstaining from this world, I have failed thus far to reach a long-term feeling of serenity. You may escape what you deny within you. However, what you deny will still go on and haunt you. And you may be in pain when you are not living the life you want to live. When you live reluctantly, when you live by consent, not by desire, as exemplified by Nietzsche's "Eternal Return".
In short, pain not only made me significantly stronger and apathetic, but also physically massive, even though I don't work out often. For it taught me to minimize any joy, and that includes the joys of junk food, and made me prioritize hunger over appetite.
How It Grew Me
It made me to give up on vegetarianism, and suffer in silence as I eat meat instead. I am never fully honest when I say I enjoy meat. But now I eat animals because doing so makes me strong, despite the suffering entailed in eating a dead being. And I will eat them so I won't be weak anymore.
Since I eat a lot of chicken, I also got very muscular as a result. I learned to minimize my mourning for their deaths in my name. And I know what they go through, I've seen videos. And since I am a master of masking, none fully understand my pain, my mysterious teacher. And it goes in that department as well.
Chicken appears to be one of the few meals that satiate my huge hunger, the hole inside of me, craving endlessly not only for food but for working on this site remoreslessly.
And it is only through pain that I have become the man I am. A physically massive ascetic who constantly fails at his attempts at long-term attainment of serenity. For I am too ambitious to rest on the satisfaction of my accomplishments. I want more. I choose to want more. I choose to be unhappy.
Pain made me a reactive individual, quick to anger when something did not go the way I wanted it to. Pain changed me. The old me is dead forever.
The catalyst for my success as a writer, thus far, has largely been this pain, which is not exclusively physical. With each day that passes without me writing, I only get more irritated, angrier at the fact that I'm wasting the life I was given here by whatever source. I view each day, as a problem, solved by productivity.
Even if I finish an article on a particular day, I might be tempted to write even more on another day. It is all I've to live for, after I realized anything else makes me feel vain, makes me feel existential dread. Very few would actually understand why something as enjoyable as going bowling can make minds like my own feel lonely within the vast void of this vain reality. Through philosophy I liberate myself from such pain. The pain of existential loneliness, expressed in such meaningless hedonistic activities.
How To Understand Rubinshteinic Pain
Do you, know how it's like?
The pain I am trying to describe to you is a pain embedded with merciless passion and iron-willed discipline. A pain that is also fueled by despair. A within philosophy, within its eternal relevancy throughout the ages, I find hope. Hope in despair of a universe whose objective meaning deserves to be questioned.
It's utilized pain, a pain that is manipulated, to be used as a means to an end. Not the pain of a masochist, but the pain of a worker, of an ascetic. A pain that is not only a business associate, but a pawn. A pawn to bridge the gap between the self and the ideal self.
Perhaps, only I know my pain with the greatest extent of knowledge. I used to suffer in the loneliness of people only thinking they understand me competently. Internally, I laugh at their lack of the Socratic Method, based on accepting the existence of ignorance as reality.
Therefore, I write. Instead of getting out, I have confined myself to quarantine, capable of lasting for weeks and months. I don't even do it for peace anymore, which I have thus far failed to achieve, due to my desire to write as many articles as possible. Peace is a liability to my plans.
It is only when I write, that I affirm to myself, that the reasoning behind my existence, is justified.
Because of this pain, I will eventually leave the Philosocom legacy to you, dear reader, and because of this, my pain is, productively wise, a good one.
However, it began spreading its goodness, only when I realized, that I couldn't ever fully satisfy it. And I never intend to satiate it, ever. I do not wish to dispose of an asset such as this. So, like a dog, I always remain hungry, and probably will be, until the day I die. I do not regret my decision, when it is capable of doing... so much good to humanity. When it is capable of helping people have faith in themselves, and liberate them from full despair.
Now that this "rebellion" of the physical body is too strong to ever be disposed of, regardless of health, it is now that I only further realize, that my life as a philosopher is "set is stone"; That other paths in life are now too late for me. I philosophize to cope with the pain, and to use it to be more productive as a writer, so I would feel better about myself, that I'm not a leech. That I am useful, like all human beings.
That I fight against my irrational urge to rest in peace for eternity. That I choose to be good, and mentally survive the irrationality within me. It deserves to be put in its place forever, when it is capable of much unnecessary agony to those who deserve it not.
And finally, of course, there is this thing: that the world is shallow by default. That shallowness is a necessary evil, but one that can be reduced through the services of intellectual rigor. That is the one reality I find hard to just submit to. Hence the very existence of this site. Hence my emotionless passion to write more and more, so, like stairs, I'll be able to climb further upwards, away from the darkness below...
