The joy of pain

Photo credit: Anne Haarmark Møllmann 2022

By divine irony, the observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the US presidential inauguration ceremony, and the second installment of my invasive dental work all happened on the same day this year. Specifically, today.

I want to write something clever about cognitive dissonance, physical pain, and the accumulation of wealth, but I am distracted by the brilliance of the sun and the winter snowscape created last night in the park across the street and where all of Brooklyn, it seems, is now sledding. This is the truest form of joy: deeply connected with the earth, slightly out of control, belly-laughs emerging from that place where exhilaration and fear overlap.

It is not lost on me that this is the type of joy we must depend on in the years ahead. The type that is rooted in our physical existence as social animals on an aging planet. The type that requires us to launch ourselves into action before we have it all figured out. The type where we hold onto each other and laugh, because even when we are grieving, our joy is what is going to keep us afloat. Our togetherness. Our ability to delight in beauty. Our star-gazing slightly delusional desire to live.

Even as I write this, the pain in my jaw is keeping me in my body. I am more grateful than I could have imagined for this gift of presence, courtesy of modern dentistry. Maybe the many coincidences that created this very moment were not life’s irony after all, but truly divine planning. A way to hold me as the earth turns, always, slowly, and I must learn, again, to be in the now. Breathing. Knowing that I am breathing. Knowing that I am alive.