Heartache

Nothing hurts the same way forever, though sometimes it seems right that it should. Gauge your pain by monitoring its intensity, frequency, and duration.

Episode Transcript

(00:07):
Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich,
and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life.
Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.

(00:27):
In life, we get hurt physically and emotionally, and it turns out we can gauge
our healing process from both types of wounds in a similar way.
When my foot started hurting while walking around Manhattan a few years ago,
I explored the rest of the city with a slight limp, assuming the pain would
just go away on its own, but it only got worse.
The day after I returned home and went to work, I walked down some stairs,

(00:51):
and when I reached the landing, blinding pain shot up my entire body and I fell forward.
It was as if I had no foot to support my weight
After three months of numerous doctor visits, I finally saw a specialist
who got upset the first doctor I had seen didn't immediately refer me to him
because I needed surgery right away.
It turns out a portion of my bone didn't get enough blood flow during my

(01:13):
teenage growth spurt, and that part of the bone died and rotted away.
This is apparently common, and surgeons typically scrape it out in a simple procedure.
The dead part of my bone, however, separated and floated to a
spot in my ankle that crushed it when I stepped down, which caused the pain.
The orthopedic specialist said, "The good news is that we can fix it."
"The bad news is that we have to break your ankle in order to do it."

(01:37):
After the operation, the doctors gauged my healing progress by measuring 3 aspects of

my pain (01:41):
its intensity, frequency, and duration.
With every passing day, each of the three characteristics of the soreness was
measured. The intensity of the pain wasn't as severe in the second week
as it was in the first, and the flare ups weren't as frequent nor lasted as long.
I was in a wheelchair for three months, followed by a few weeks on crutches,

(02:02):
by which point the doctors deemed my ankle fully healed. I was no longer in pain,
but one leg was significantly weaker than the other from lack of use.
During my last appointment, I asked the surgeon how I could strengthen
my reconstructed ankle, and he simply said, "Use it."
So, with metal rods and screws in my foot, I started playing volleyball in order to
strengthen my ankle, and that's when volleyball became a dominant feature in my

(02:25):
life for a decade to follow.
Since that experience in the hospital, I've been using the same method of gauging pain
to measure the healing progress from heartache, loss, and grief,
not just physical agony.
I close my eyes and focus on the pain's intensity, frequency, and duration,
and each day, every aspect of the hurt is diminished, if ever so slightly.
Grief, specifically, can feel really heavy at first, and I still don't know if it actually

(02:50):
gets lighter with time, or if we just grow strong enough to handle the extra weight.
A certain level of sorrow is always there, like the scar on my ankle,
but it doesn't hurt anymore.
And the surgeon was right, the best way to strengthen a weakened muscle is to use it.
The key is to get to know the pain, not to run away from it.
I have a friend who was diagnosed with Alagille Syndrome at birth, and the doctors

(03:12):
didn't think he would live very long. He underwent many surgeries during the
first 20 years of his life, replacing internal organs multiple times.
And when I last saw him at the Mayo Clinic after another transplant, he told me he
wasn't on any painkillers. I thought he was insane, considering his chest had been
cut open just a couple of days before.
But this young man looked me in the eyes and said, "If I mask the pain with drugs,"

(03:34):
"I will never know when it subsides."
"The way I see it, I have reason to celebrate when the pain level goes from nine to eight."
Such deep insight from his experience,
choosing to focus on the progress and beauty of his healing, rather than
on the fact that he was still hurting.
When the pain level went down from 7 to 6, he vividly recalled what it was like a week before
because he never numbed the pain or ran away from it. He sat with it,

(03:57):
he got to know it, and he made peace with it.
We can do the same thing with the sorrow of loss, heartache, and grief.
Like bad weather, gauge your heartache's intensity, frequency, and duration.
Nothing hurts forever, even though sometimes we think
it's only right that it should. As Maya Angelou said, "Every storm runs out of rain."

(04:17):
Timber Hawkeye is the bestselling author of Faithfully Religionless
and Buddhist Boot Camp.
For additional information, please visit BuddhistBootCamp.com,
where you can order autographed books to support the Prison Library Project,
watch Timber's inspiring TED Talk, and join our monthly mailing list.
We hope you have enjoyed this episode

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and invite you to subscribe for more thought-provoking discussions.
Thank you for being a Soldier of Peace in the Army of Love. 🙏🏼