good pain

I wonder whether kids or adults have it better.

The case study:

I quit gymnastics at nine.

Why would anyone willingly inflict pain on themselves?, I’d wonder everyday after gym.

The point of stretching didn’t compute in my nine-year-old brain. It hurt and our bodies use pain to warn us. I considered myself warned.

Now at 23, I can’t go a day without it. Stretching hurts, but I wouldn’t call it pain. Real pain, as I’ve learned and know it now, is dull—achingly still. Stretching pain is agile, it moves, swipes, and cleans, like an alchohol wipe on a wound. It’s good pain. 

Do children understand good pain? Coffee is bitter, wine is acidic. I read somewhere that infants are wired to like sugar so they don’t poison themselves. They grow up and inevitably poison themselves, willingly or accidentally, because they realize that the spectrum of pleasure is full and wide. 

The complexity of good pain— getting hurt and realizing you were alive for a bit, the excruciating, but most gratifying push at the end of the race, the danger of uncertainty and uncertainty of danger— makes me re-assess society’s incessant need to return to childhood. Maybe like a kid’s menu, our palates used to be safe. Our bodies used to warn us against being hungry for more than that.