Responding To Pain

December 1, 2011
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Of late, I’ve been preoccupied with pain. Sixty-one year old knees, that crick and crack from the earlier years of youthful disregard of reasonable anatomical limitations, keep me conscious of every step. Recently, an intestinal inflammation made me even forget about my knees. Pain grabs our attention, but too many of us try to avoid confronting the cause of the pain, as evidenced by the epidemic in America of prescription drug abuse. More Americans and Georgians are dying from overdoses of prescription painkillers than from overdoses of cocaine, heroin, meth, and amphetamines combined.

Nobody sane likes pain. Pain disorients, distorts perception, induces irrationality, inappropriateness, and even destructive behavior. Pain can drive one insane, and it is not just physical pain but, perhaps even more so, emotional, psychological, and societal pain. The pains of poverty, abuse, rejection, oppression, depression, homelessness, loneliness, and grief can inflict hurt more pervasive than a physical injury or ailment.

It was so dreadfully painful this week to read about Carulus Hines, the 40 year old mother who stabbed her 4 year old daughter, Nalecia, to death before Atlanta Police could break through the doors of her home to stop her with a hail of 10-16 bullets (a different and deadly pain, why so many shots?). This mother, overwhelmed by her emotional, mental, and social challenges, horridly took her baby girl’s life and lost her own. We are tempted to blame her, her family, her neighbors, and/or the Family and Children’s Service for not responding to the glaring signs pointing to this eventual calamity, but we all share some blame, because Carulus was not an anomaly. We are in trying times and too many people are painfully at the brink that Carulus crossed, but our social sedation of detachment allows us to mask the pain and block out the depth of deprivation and depravity in our midst. Certainly many pains are self-chosen, but the repercussions of wars, corporate greed, joblessness, inaccessible health care, and permanent underclass status, are not chosen, rather painfully imposed.

We must not just mask or sedate her pain or society’s pain, we must treat it and ourselves. We must obligate ourselves as Dr. King did:
“On one hand, I must attempt to change the soul of individuals so that societies may be changed. On the other hand, I must attempt to change societies so that individual souls will have a chance.”

by Imam Plemon T. El-Amin