Somewhere around the world today, tens of millions of people will be in pain. While in such a state, they won’t be thinking about their shopping list, their hydro bill, or their political affiliation. They will be thinking about alleviating pain. They will be vulnerable and may need assistance. The state is one which every living being will encounter at various times in our lives.    

This vulnerable state has a benefit believe it or not. It serves to round off the edges of our ego in order to more easily emote empathy. You see, for good reason youthful ideals sprout early in life with a healthy self-determinism at our core. The journey encounters curves and junctions and potholes which add sustenance to character. However; one day a wheel can literally fall off of what we once thought was a finely tuned machine and we humbly call the mechanic.

Gratitude re-emerges if it had been suppressed from our vigour as we drive away from the shop. Our view points are revisited amidst a broader context having come to re-evaluate the convenience of owning a car.

Having recovered, we count our blessings and wonder about those less fortunate who may not have had the luxury of good health care or a car mechanic. We think about struggles faced by single mothers raising kids alone because they’ve lost their husband to a disease residing in a country void of social programs. We think about diseases overcome and forgotten in the first world but still lingering amongst the poor. We think about who will not get their pain alleviated due to circumstance.

It’s really difficult to know for sure when you haven’t been there and seen it. It’s easy to take a position and become absorbed in it thereby refuting reasonable conflicting data. It’s easy to jump in with the mob which looks smart so that we too can appear smart. Pain has no intellect. It is not going to be appeased by rational minds administering debate on transgressions of “the deep state”.