Pain is a Color - Not a Shadow

My stories are far more compelling when the added ingredient is my own personal pain. That time I loaded several heavy boxes into my attic? Dull as dirt. Until I add the detail that I took a bad step and fell through the ceiling, landing on my testicles straddling a crossbeam. You see? Significantly more interesting. And why is that? Why is pain such a necessary ingredient within the dynamic of crafting an impactful narrative?

Certainly, we don’t go out of our way to point arrows at our pain. Yes, we herald the moments that suffering makes us look like a Greek hero, but we don’t rush to proclaim our own brokenness and weakness. Society tells us that sort of pain is a shadow, a blemish on the impression we are supposed to emit in order to be an esteemed leader in society. Pretending perfection may not be good for the blood pressure, but it’s great for the LinkedIn bio page. 

But pain is not a shadow. It is not a tarnish on our existence. It is an accentuation. A definer of richer experience. A life of efforts attempted and failed. Of knee scrapes or worse that eventually heal. Of crises and losses that may end something, but also grow something new. Pain is a color. A beautiful color. The kind in the back row of the 124-count crayon pack. The metallic gold one that makes the sunset you draw different then the rest of the kids in the class.

Because pain doesn’t merely add an essence of relatability to a narrative. In an age of overadvertising and social media positioning/pretending, it is proof of truth. Proof that we are each made up of some percentage of failures and accidents and mismanaged choices and garbage and that it can all matter in a profound way toward who we become. If we allow it to matter. And in my experience as a storyteller, there is one surefire way to allow our brokenness to matter: let it into our stories. 

About a year back, I taught an adult education class on creative writing. I built a lesson plan ahead of time, but that plan was quickly cast aside when I met my class. Out of forty adult students, more than half of them had enrolled in the class as a last ditch effort to find some outlet to escape their pain. Three of my students were parents of grown children who had recently committed suicide. Needless to say, I felt ill-equipped. 

Until.

Until I allowed my pain to overwhelm my teaching. I began to steer the lectures toward the cathartic power of narrative as a therapeutic tool to deal with grief and loss. The act of crafting art (in my specific case, writing) holds an unusual and profound power. By the sheer act of telling our own story - delving deeply into the brutal nuts and bolts of our pain and brokenness - just by laying that process to paper - the healing process is activated. Think on that. We write of our greatest grief and of our weakest moments - the pain in our life that has no resolution or answer - and then without actually receiving any answers, things begin to change. The words laid to page begin to unburden us because they are no longer being held in a clenched fist or locked within a burdened brain. They are no longer only ours. They have been catapulted onto the world. Onto others. And that is when the real miracle occurs.

The greatest lie we each believe is that our pain holds no positive charge, so we grip it close to our heavy heart. But, when we release our broken pieces - especially into art (because that is the method through which others are able to grab hold), we find that it does contain positive possibilities. The reason we could not see the positive is because the positive in our pain was not for us. It was for others. You see, in this existence, each of us - each person - is not a complete picture. Each of us is a jigsaw piece. We don’t make sense alone because we aren’t meant to stand alone. Alone, I hurt. Alone, I am confused and too easily fall into despair. But, when I connect, I see the big secret: 

What I need, you have. What I have, you need. 

I will always be broken while my pain is held close because my pain can’t heal me. My pain can heal you. And your pain can heal me. Because, regardless of how deep the crevasse of my pain goes, I suddenly discover that I am not the only one who has been living down there. Relaying my pain - even my confusing, unanswered pain - into art just might heal you. And your story, your narrative, your brokenness - it just might heal me.

I presented my adult education class with three writing projects over the course of that semester: an essay of fiction, an essay about the best moment they could remember, and an essay about the worst moment they could remember. As you could imagine, many were dreading that final assignment and were quite certain they would abandon the class before needing to dig into that specific pain. But, by the time we arrived at that assignment, the power of laying the truth to paper had so captivated each of them that they wrote the deepest, richest, and most painful essays I had ever read. And then I watched their words impact the others in the room. Tears flowed, friendships were forged, and burdens were lifted. Without any answers given. Without any brutal histories erased. 

You have an opportunity today. Whatever art you are creating, as you craft your narrative, you can keep your story above sea level and within the palette of ROYGBIV. Or, you can delve deeper into the richer colors of your own brokenness. You can add the dynamic of the highs and lows of the life you have experienced into your scripts, your advertising, your blogging, your social media. If you dare that, two things are likely to happen: your impact on your audience will grow - and your own burden of pain will begin to transform into something else entirely. Into a new color that holds the power to lift the pain off of the shoulders of others. 

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Mark Steele is the Owner & Founder of Mark Steele Creative, where he crafts narratives that matter.