The article raises a TON of issues, really!

I like taking the attitude that just about everything is a choice. I do, however, accept that there are accidents - billions of people all exercising free will is bound to create an accident here and there.

I find it difficult to talk to people who lay blame for their circumstances outside of themselves. They've given up - through choice - so much of their power that they don't see where they are responsible, and how things can be different for them, stuck in their own invisible prison.

As for joy, while we can make a choice to be joyful, we inhabit a physical body that can limit our capacity for joyfulness. Right now my liver is clogged. I wondered where my vitality had gone to, why I was depressed and no longer making plans, until I got my bloodwork results and saw elevated liver enzymes and high cholesterol. Duh! :) So now after a flush I'm much more joyful. :)

Our own nervous system can limit our ability to be joyful. If we're constantly living in drama, such as meeting deadlines, gossip, road rage, obsessive dieting, etc., then our neurons learn that to survive they must have plenty of receptor sites for anger, frustration and pain, and fewer for nutrition and joy. Our cells downgrade and remain downgraded until we give up our addiction to drama. That is why Eastern philosophies teach detachment first. You're not meant to stay detached! Just long enough to get out of the tension/denial/rage-gratification-relief and redemption cycle. Then we go through a kind of Depression until the neurons upgrade again.

So if you're finding joy hard to find, don't think it is all a failure of the heart and mind, attitude and mind-set. It could be low physical vitality.

quote>>>>>> we think pain is pleasure, and joy is threatening. The latter is perhaps a little easier to understand since it is a common experience. Haven't you ever had the thought
"This is too good to last"? >>>>>>>>>

We never seem to say: "This pain is too strong to last", which is a curious thing eh?
I have spent many long days in pain, and never once had the idea that it might just end, the way joy does. What does this mean?

We can be bitter after pain goes away, and hang onto it. But what if you have an abcessed tooth - are you saying it does not hurt other than the amount I want it to? Even before it gets treatment? While the hatchet is buried in my shoulder, for eg., it does not hurt?
What are you talking about Lapis? I don't think this relates to real physical pain does it?- or is there no such thing, since humans must "create it" with our senses?
Aww jeez, I am sure you mean well, but ...


As far as joy, ya for sure I sabotage it, esp. relationships - we all look for faults , or signs that things are not what they seem. "Too good to be true" has hit us all so many times we are paranoid, and bring it on ourselves.

But as for the rest of it, I can only say that I do not get it all, or perhaps it does not apply to chronic pain conditions, as you suggest.
Chronic pain does not mean we cannot live happily though, perhaps thats what you mean, like rhetoric I think, for emotional pains. We can be bitter after pain goes away, and hang onto it. But what if you have an abcessed tooh - are you saying it does not hurt other than the amnount I want it to?


I do remember the start of this pain - it was when I was on a motorcycle, and going thru a green light, and WHAM a drunken 15yr. old plows thru her red light.
I understand what you mean - how I asked for it to happen. It must have worked, because I really hurt after that one.

It was enough, thank goodness, because I have never needed to ask for pain since.
Although I apparently do insist on it. Like, when teeth go bad, I go to the dentist, which hurts.
And when the plates in my leg , from that accident, got too bad, I had them taken out, and that was much worse pain than the plates caused, but it only lasted a few weeks like that, and then it was less pains than the plate, which is why I did the operation.

I love Joy too though. She was my first, actually. You didn't read this far tho', right?

This will clear it up: One last joke!
"After we made love he took a piece of chalk and made an outline of my body." Joan Rivers

Ha ha eh?
Anyways, thaks for the thought provoking ideas about pain , but I just don't want to understand, as I am holding on? Those doctrines can be tricky.

Dickless Halfshifter.