Blog 3158 – 06.23.2024

The Purpose of Pain

Over fifty years ago when I was a teen, circa nineteen-sixty six, I had several poems published in the Teen Tempo section of Chattanooga Post, a short lived long defunct daily newspaper. I hope my poetry did not contribute to its demise. I do not think Chattanooga had a large enough readership to support three local newspapers. Some years later even those two papers merged into a single newspaper called the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

The shortest of the poems that I had published was only one stanza:

The Purpose of Pain

The purpose of pain as I see it

All toll of one heart torn

Is to make the heart so tender

Each dying rose to morn.

Like many a young person I had experienced my first heart break and my poetry reflected as much. Life is full of heart aches, pain, and disappointment. We can either use them to make us hard and closed off or we can use them to make us more empathetic to the suffering of others. I believe the later is the wiser choice.

I have a fondness for flowers and birds and none fall to the ground that do not as my higher best self take note. People are of even greater value than the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. The poet John Donne wrote, “No man is an island entire unto himself…any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind…”

Use your pain, troubles, and disappointments to make you more tender hearted toward your fellow man. We are travelers together on a quest to reveal the highest and best in ourselves and in others.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White