Pain or suffering?

A colleague of mine used to observe, "Pain is pain. Suffering is thinking about the pain." I always thought that made sense, but it didn't really resonate deep-down with me until I developed chronic arthritis pain. There's really not a whole lot to be done except to exercise regularly and gently, eat right, take good care of oneself, and live with it -- or take very strong medications with scary side effects that give one considerable pause for thought. So I've been seeing for myself what that statement really means.

In order to come to the foreground of my experience, the pain has to be in the foreground of my thinking. It sometimes is. When it rushes to the front of my mind, I notice that I can get really engaged with it very quickly. I start rating it, or wondering if/when it will get worse, or trying to remember before the pain, or regretting the things I can no longer do, or worrying about whether I'll be able to do something I'm planning to do... I could list hundreds of pain-related thoughts, but you get the idea.

But here's the wonderful thing. If I let those thoughts pass and get engaged with, or turn my attention to something else that's interesting to me, the pain recedes. I go about my life, doing what I can do. Then it's not like I'm living free of pain; I am living free of suffering from the pain. The pain is the passing thought, awareness that something isn't quite right in one joint or another. Suffering is all the thinking I do about that thought, especially the negative, frightening thinking.

In no way would I ever suggest to someone with chronic pain that pain isn't "real" or that if they were "high enough," they wouldn't feel it. But now, from real experience, I can truly say that "Pain is pain, and suffering is thinking about the pain."