Triumph over Pain

...My friend's face darkened as she gazed at my mouth murmuring phrases of consolation and prayer, and she said, in a voice choked by the lump of grief and sorrow: "Such are misfortunes — they descend on us heavy and massed, and never cease pouring down upon us, shock after shock, affliction upon affliction... misfortunes that twist the neck, that leave in the eyes a look of frozen despair, that leave on the cheeks a dusty pallor, and in the heart an emptiness, and in the soul a barrenness and a dead dryness!..."

...And she turned her face away from me, hiding a welling tear and a trembling lip... and her cold hand reached out to grasp mine, drawing from it courage and strength...

Death! That terrifying demon bares its fangs, boasting of its power, mocking our weakness. And we sons of men — nothing on earth truly brings us to a halt, our foreheads in the dust, broken, shattered, except death — death alone. As for all the many other calamities, they are but passing skirmishes that rarely leave a trace in our souls.

...In pain we are born, in pain we live, and in pain we die — and is the whole of life anything but a chain of pains? How few are those with whom life deals gently, sparing them its torments and its pains!! The righteous, devout man, like the corrupt and wicked one — each carries his cross in life: the one bears it with the believer's endurance and firmness, the other with riot and blasphemy. But the affliction is one and the same; it descends on every soul according to its capacity. Every day thousands of human beings are bereaved of their dearest and best-beloved, and this cup passes from lip to lip; not a single person among mankind is spared its bitter taste.

Upon my life, in this truth there is much beautiful consolation for those whom the hand of fate singles out, dealing them torment in full measure.

A great, heavy misfortune overtakes us, and a shaking seizes our minds and our thoughts; at first it seems to us that we cannot bear its burdens, and we sink into a murderous despair that makes deliverance from this life, from its cruelty and its injustice, seem fair to us, while within us there stirs a doubt of our faith. Yet the truth is that however great and heavy the misfortune, there remains in our souls energy enough to resist it and overcome it.

Who among us has not heard of "Beethoven," the musical genius of the nineteenth century? He began his music lessons at the age of four, and gave public concerts at seven. He had not reached ten before his gifts had flowered and borne fruit; yet never for a single day was he sound and healthy, brimming with youth and vigor. He suffered the twin torments of rheumatism, of failing eyesight and weakness of hearing, and he lost his hearing at thirty-two. But this calamity of health, for all its direct bearing on his work, had no effect whatever on his spirit or his productive energy — indeed, a portion of his finest musical compositions was written in that bitter period...

God alone knows how much pain and privation the breast of this great musician carried; and yet he seldom complained or grumbled... What we do know is that he folded a great deal of it away in his generous heart. His last words tell us as much — spoken with longing shortly before his death, as he pointed to his piled-up compositions:

"I shall hear it in heaven!"

..."I shall hear it in heaven!" Beethoven said it, closed his eyes, and his spirit soared into space, to return whence it had come... In his conquest of pain, his triumph over it, he became a legend among men, told from generation to generation...

How many geniuses among the sons of men has disaster befallen — and pain smelted their spirits and polished their rare minds, till there was in them all beauty and goodness, till there was in them a heavenly touch of the spirit of God!!...

"And how am I to triumph over pain?" my friend asks me, after silence and reflection. How am I to overcome grief, when it stands forever a giant in the depths of my depths, with its glassy eyes and its cold, sullen face?

...And I say to my friend: come out of your seclusion, and exchange this stillness of yours for movement... No harm if it begins as pretense, for it will soon become natural... Misfortunes are the touchstone of people's mettle; they crystallize it and reveal its truth and its essence. How many a misfortune has ended as a blessing to its bearer, and inscribed his name among the great... Grief was not created to sit us down like this in silence and torpor, neither among the living nor among the dead!!

"How am I to triumph over pain?" my friend asks me — when the field of work is wide indeed. How many a great and mighty work is the child of pain, its nursling? How many a poet, how many a man of letters, was brought out into fame and glory by nothing but pain — pain alone — and but for it neither would have been anything worth mention...

Our absorption in some humane work — in easing the pains of humanity, in attending to the misfortunes of others — can erase, if only for a time, some of our aching grief, or lighten its weight. And this opens the door to a wide road of noble works that await us, works in urgent need of every hand that consoles and helps...

...And when despair floods your heart, and the walls of your soul crumble in an hour of your weakness, and you doubt the sacred mission for which you came — return to God; return to Him in humility, and take refuge in prayer — prayer that rises from the depths, joined with the warmth of faith. You will find God at your side, strengthening your faltering will and granting you peace of soul and warmth of spirit...

...I have known for years a lady who fought a hero's fight in the field of letters and journalism. At last she took to her bed, crippled by illness, which left her body, in its wasting, the shadow of a body. She speaks in a weak, failing voice, and her voice comes from between her lips like a whisper, like soft warbling... and weak as it is, it is lavish in its giving of wisdom and counsel. Never once did I visit her — with much despair and its like within me — without being humbled in her presence, and filled with new strength to walk on with courage and steadfastness and to take up again my struggle in this life. I still remember one of her sayings, which she would often repeat before me:

"Pain steels our wills and fits us for the noble spiritual struggle; and we are not worthy of the grace of the beautiful, free life until we have known pain — until we have tasted it in our blood, in our bones, in our brains, and in the utmost depths of our souls!"