I’m going to try to keep this brief today.  I had a particularly bad night’s sleep, even for me, and I am in a significant amount of pain even after taking what I have for it (without massively overdosing).  Thankfully‒so far‒my thumbs aren’t acting up too much as I write this.

It certainly does get old, this chronic pain bit.  I don’t know if anyone out there is considering trying it as a way of being, but I can tell you that, after more than twenty years, I’ve decided it’s not a good lifestyle choice.  So please, if you’re considering it, then reconsider.

I know, I know, no one‒as far as I’m aware‒chooses to have chronic pain, not as such, anyway.  I suppose one might say that anyone who becomes a professional football player (American football, I mean, though all competitive sports have at least some tendency in the same direction) is in a sense choosing a life of chronic pain.

But at least there are compensations, and one receives them more or less up front.  The bill, however, almost inevitably comes due for those who play any kind of serious competitive sports.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad they do what they do.  I enjoy watching football, and to a lesser degree several other sports.  But even golf (which I also enjoy watching the pros play) gives its practitioners accumulated damage.

Is there any sport that does not exact a toll on those who take part in it seriously?  I don’t know.  Maybe free solo rock climbing doesn’t tend to give people quite the same kind of chronic, post-high-impact injury problems, because high impacts in that sport tend to be fatal.  Other than those, though, it appears to be a practice associated with great care and deliberation.  There is little to no tackling involved (they don’t even use other kinds of tackle, thus the “free solo” part).

I don’t know why I’m going into such things.  I was just speaking tongue in cheek about the idea of people actually choosing to have chronic pain, which was an absurd notion.  Then I realized that, in a way, people often do choose things that will almost inescapably lead to chronic pain.  But, of course, they aren’t consciously choosing the pain, and many of them probably don’t seriously think it’s something that can happen to them, not when they’re young and feel unstoppable.

Then, by the time they’ve come to recognize their own susceptibility, their own mortality and morbidity, it’s too late.

I suspect that chronic pain was much less common for our ancestors, at least if you go back far enough.  This is not because they were hardier or healthier than we are necessarily, though they probably had less occasion to be indolent.  But we are exposed to injuries they might not have been‒even minor traffic accidents can cause damage that accumulates and persists‒and also, we survive many things that would simply have killed them, thanks to modern science and technology.

Just because we survive them doesn’t mean they are harmless, though.  As Billy Joel sang, “You are still the victim of the accidents you leave.”  That which does not kill you can still leave damage; it does not necessarily make you stronger, any more than syphilis made Nietzsche healthier.

On that cheery note, I think I will wrap up this week and put it in the fridge for leftovers, where it will eventually go bad and will have to be thrown out anyway.  I know, that particular metaphor doesn’t really make sense.  I didn’t have anything in mind when I wrote it, I was just following the automatic thought that was initiated by the words “wrap up”.  If any of you have a good potential meaning for the metaphor that I just frivolously threw out there, please, feel free to share it with us.

Also, please have a good day and a good weekend if you can.