Pleasure from Pain

It is hard to describe how much of inconveniences the mother and brother of a companion of mine go through in order to keep the father under control. The father in his late seventies, had been suffering from some kind of psychotic disorder, which the doctors are not able to diagnose and attend to it. Sleepless nights and days have become their daily routine, as the father begins to wander in his past glory, and imagines that he is in a different location and a different time. Anger and violent protests have become quite common, and to keep him under control is not an easy task, but this is something that they cannot help but accept. Often I hear the whisper of the mother that she is worn out and she would not live long under this kind of stressful situations.

Two things come to my mind. First, the care and concern the family has in attending to the old father, who is just not aware of what he says and what he does. Diabetes and swinging blood pressure have made his situation worse; when he was taking medicine to keep his head and mind cool, it had repercussions on the diabetes and blood pressure. Now that the hospital he was staying in has discharged him, my companion is blank as to what the family would do next. He keeps muttering that they are facing a dead-end, all the possibilities having run dry. I could see that he too has not slept well ever since the family brought his father to the city; he has been running helter skelter, trying to meet doctors, getting medicine, and at the same time attending to his office works.

Everyone in the family seem to be fully aware that they cannot blame or shout at the old man, who does things without fully being conscious of; they do not put the blame on him. Sometimes they are hurt by what he tells them, but they know that he is not aware of the words which spill from his lips. They try to be as gentle and nice to him as they can, and that makes the old man a bit soft in his dealings with them, but that is not the end. It would not take too long for him to get into his usual tantrums and put all of them into uneasy situation. Sometimes I wonder what I would do if I were in the place of my companion; it is psychologically not too healthy to live in such hyper tension day after day. It is sure to affect one mentally and psychologically.

Second, everyone in the family is a silent sufferer; we all suffer for the ones we love and care, and that seems to be part of the bundle! It would be quite unrealistic to imagine that we always have good time with the people we love. There are times when we may not have any other option than to silently suffer, while the other party may not even be aware that we are shedding silent tears. The other possibility is also there, when one party is indifferent and cold, the other party may go through untold suffering, and it may be hard to accept if the pain and suffering is inflicted on the other deliberately and willingly! This is yet another riddle of life, for which we may not have an answer.

Even as we suffer for our dear ones and those we care, there is an amount of joy and happiness we may experience deep within; this may be a passive pleasure, but it is real! But this pleasure may turn to self-defeating when it begins to submit oneself voluntarily to be persecuted and tortured by another. A pleasure which comes out of self-pity and self-surrender before sadistic and masochistic persons cannot be deemed real and authentic. Pain and suffering come to us unasked, and if we go seeking them, that may be the sign that we are going crazy, and may need some psychiatric counseling, but when it comes to us unasked, we can either accept it or reject it, depending on what we really want to do with it.