They Say That Love Is Pain....

While on my way to church today I was listening to a song by The Slackers called "You Don't Know I" and part of a lyric got me thinking. The song says "they say that love is pain" and as I sat in church I started to think about it. It's true that love can be painful when it is not returned or when it was there but no longer is. It can even be painful when one is with the wrong person. But perhaps we need to also look at how we define love. Instead of merely seeing it as between two people we should realize that we love our families, our friends and those that are in our church, albeit in different ways.

When viewed that way the lyric can take upon itself a different point of view. Within a family love can be painful when a member of the family falls away because they have found something else to occupy their life and it consumes them. My younger sister has had a battle for most of her adult life with drugs even though she would only admit it on rare occasions. She ended up with drugs being more important to her than her own daughters whom she was not there for and let others raise. There is much pain there. My nieces love their mother on one level however they also know on another level that she cannot be trusted to tell the truth about anything or even show up clean for important events in their lives. They have suffered with the idea that their mother was not there for them no matter what they did to try and let her know that they needed her, no matter how much they loved her.

I won't even pretend to act like I know why my sister is this way because I have no idea. The three of us (there is also an older sister) went through the same things however they impacted us all in different ways. For myself I became very introverted and had no belief or faith in myself, no self confidence and thought that I wasn't good enough for other people to even like. Whatever she has felt she chose to try and fill what was empty with drugs and that never will work for very long. It's a short term solution to a long term problem. Amazingly she has never hit rock bottom, never sunken low enough to try and make something of her life or to be a part of her children's life. Perhaps she never will.

She has her own pain to deal with and this is the manner she has chosen. I think we all do this in different ways. If you are unhappy because you work a horrible job that is intentionally putting out products that you know will harm people in the long run or you are stealing money from clients then no matter how much you act like it doesn't bother you it does, somewhere deep down below and that knowledge manifests itself in varied ways. Addiction is the usual path but people can be addicted to so many things. We often think of addiction as only to drugs, alcohol (okay it is a drug too), porn, sex and things like that but there is also addiction to eating, to living life on the edge or to religion. You can be addicted to anything, even so called good things.


Anything can be taken to an extreme when you are unfulfilled, living a life that you don't want to live, being a person that you don't want to be. Kurt Cobain blew out his brains when his band Nirvana got too big too fast when he simply could have backed off, stopped all of the interviews to people he couldn't respect or didn't want to know. He could have stopped all of the massive touring and the major label nonsense and just made music for himself. Sure he would have made a lot less money but somehow I think that money wasn't all that important to him given how he chose to end it all. I don't know if it would have made him any happier but he couldn't do that.

Love can be wonderful, full of happiness and good times but unfortunately it can also be pain and that can change from one person to another in how it is felt and dealt with. The trick is learning how to accept the pain and grow from it and understand that it is a natural and normal part of life. Just try not to let it happen too much. Other than that try the advice of Joe Rogan and surround yourself with cool people and get all of the fake losers out of your life. You'll be amazed at how much stress and garbage leave your life. It's worth a try.




Published by Don Leach