Pain

"Pain is a teacher."


I remember the times I'm learning how to ride a bicycle. Yes, I've even written a blog post about that, somewhere within this blog... Well, do I remember the pain? Nope. I can't remember the pain I felt when I fell from the bicycle. One time, two times, three times... I fell and fell again. However, I kept getting onto the bicycle again, kept pushing myself, trying hard to steer and keep my balance. It was so long ago, I can't recall the pain I felt. But I sure do remember how to ride a bicycle. That's my point, you will not remember the pain you felt, you'll only remember the techniques to do a particular activity. Pain IS a teacher.


Today, I went out with my friends to celebrate one of my friend's belated birthday. Guess what was our plan? It's not cycling... It's ice-skating. NO, I don't know how to ice-skate. I'd never tried ice-skating before, today was my first experience. When I wore my skates and entered the skating platform, I already knew this is not gonna be easy. I'm unfamiliar with skating, and unable to keep my balance on the skates. 


Soon, one by one, my friends began to lose their balance, slip and fall. I'm telling you, it's very difficult from the start. I looked at other people, those who know how to skate, they skated with such grace, such precision, and such effortlessly. It just seems so easy to them. The next thing I know is that it's my turn to fall. Just being unable to keep my balance and keep up to my skate's speed, is all it needs to make me fall. It didn't really hurt much, save for the very big blister near my ankle. As I look around, people around me were falling as well. My friends, the kids, the adults, the amateurs, and even those who know how to skate, they all fell. 


It doesn't matter whether you get hurt, but if you really did get hurt, make sure you learn from it. It can be anything, cycling, ice-skating, roller-blading, soccer, basketball. It can be even related to relationship problems. We can get hurt emotionally by another person as well. But we all have to learn to not get hurt the same way again. Pain taught me how to ride a bicycle. If I didn't get hurt falling off a bicycle, I wouldn't have mastered the techniques to riding a bicycle. If I didn't get hurt while getting "smashed" by the unseen basketball from a pass, I wouldn't have learned how to position myself properly so that I can keep an eye to the ball movement(and make sure the ball doesn't hit my face). Pain has taught me a lot of stuff, these are just two examples only. We'll have to embrace pain and learn from it.