Pain is one of the gifts of life.....without it, we would not be aware of severe dangers to our well-being. It's our bodies' way of telling us what NOT to do. There's a parable I learned as a kid about teaching little children what not to do: the more you tell a kid not to put his hands in the fireplace, the more the kid will want to do it. The best way is to have him put his hands in once, get burnt and feel the pain, then he will not do it ever again.
That was the long way of saying I am feeling a lot of pain right now with stocks, but at least I will learn from it and know what not to do in the future. They say experience/ time is the best teacher; pain has a strong case too, maybe the math teacher vs. the language teacher. There are many types of pain: physical pain, emotional pain, financial pain, regretting pain (psychological pain), etc.... the different forms impact people to different degrees. Financial pain has always been a big motivator for me not to make the same mistake twice, but as more money comes in, that pain gets dulled to the point of forgetting it, so the big bad stock market inserts some big drops once in a while to give sharp reminders of that pain.
It's a good thing I can withstand financial gain (don't jinx it!) for now, because I REALLY can't stand financial pain. MJ says that a lot of men have low pain tolerance at the hospital and don't behave "like a man" when it comes to taking it like a man, and I believe it. I would consider myself one of those sissy men. I wince not only every time blood is drawn, but every time the nurse pricks my finger to check iron! It's like crying before the tearjerker movie "Titanic" has even started. I try to comfort myself that it's my body's natural defense system to try to shield itself from further pain, by being more sensitive to pain, and it's a sign of health (like if you had a strong reaction to the Covid vaccine, your body is likely healthy because the anti-bodies came out in force to fight what it thought was the vaccine). Often, though, I find that it's the ANTICIPATION of pain that "hurts" me the most, just knowing that something painful is coming makes me react much more than if the pain had just happened spontaneously without forewarning. Same excuse for covering my ears at a scary warning: I can't stand the anticipation. A nurse/ phlebotomist once joked with a fellow nurse when she was about to stick the needle in my arm at a blood donation: "What did you do to him?" she asked the other nurse. In a perverse way, I kind of would like to be a phlebotomist one day, not because I have a sadistic desire to inflict pain, but because I want to PREVENT pain as much as possible because I've been there. (My hands are too clumsy though to be of good use there).
Other than voluntarily getting a bit of discomfort (not even pain, really, compared to what some other people have to deal with) every 2 months at a blood drive, I don't deal with pain much at all: maybe the electric shock there from touching a charged-up car or electric switch (another one where anticipation is worse than the actual pain), cutting myself slightly, etc... so I live a life of luxury. Even just thinking about pregnant mothers......the needles, the hunger pains, the nausea, and that all-out sprint to the finish line of pushing out the baby (or the C-section option which also isn't quite a picnic in the park) deserves more recognition. And there's really no "lesson" learned from that sort of pain, except I guess not to have a baby again. It was a voluntary sacrifice to take a huge gamble that having a baby will all be worth it....and for many people, supposedly, it is. Just the anticipation of it all, though, would make me cringe, and instead of 5 minutes or so waiting to give blood and knowing there will be a big needle going into my arm, it's knowing that a whole person will be coming out of my stomach, and the wait is at least 9 months. Kind of a crazy proposition if you think about it, that mothers willingly put themselves throught that sort of pain. Must be a lot of love involved. I also think, despite the pain that I go through each blood donation, I always come back time after time for more voluntary pain, for a benefit that I've never actually seen be used for any good; my blood could be thrown away or used to help a villanous monster who doesn't deserve it; who knows. I guess, though, I think it's worth doing, no matter how painful or irrational it might seem.
And why am I comparing blood donations to pregnancy anyway?
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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