The Happy Medium

I've talked about extremes, but not about the happy medium. Truth be told, I'm still figuring out what it is. All I can do is identify what it isn't. And one of the things it isn't is eliminating all pain/discomfort, which seems to have been one of my main goals. I mention it mainly because I don't think I'm the only person who operates this way although I suspect that most people don't realize it.

C.S. Lewis described pain as being 'the megaphone of God'. I may have misinterpreted a lot of what he meant by that, but I do understand that pain is a necessary component of life; it compels us to recognize and hopefully address things that causing harm/damage. The best way I currently have to help illustrate is to point out what really happens with people who contact Hansen's disease, otherwise known as leprosy. While it is a disease caused by infectious bacteria, much of the damage that a victim suffers is in fact self-inflicted because one of the symptoms is loss of sensation. The reality is that pain often prompts us to remove ourselves from unhealthy situations that would otherwise damage us.

So pain is supposed to be a regular and healthy part of life.  Part of what's unhealthy is struggling through it alone, although American culture tends to glorify individualism; being healthy means having at least one other person on whom you can rely for support. But that also means being a supportive person for those peers and not just an emotional leech.

And of course, figuring out who are the right people are means putting yourself out there and risking rejection and/or other bad experiences while figuring out which folks are the right type to try and concentrate being around. And that's something I'm not doing enough of now.