Closely felt and closely examined, we find, to our astonishment that we are physically and psychologically designed to feel hurt. Our very survival depends upon it.
Hurt
is not what hurts us, what hurts us is not following hurt to its source. Hurt always continues to hurt, and in a greater way, when we do not follow it back through our minds, through our bodies, through our memories and through all its endless sources to the place where it begins. Hurt is our invitation to a new beginning: firstly to stopping the hurt, then to nursing the hurt, and there after if we follow it sincerely, to healing both the hurt and somehow, the source from which it first issued. Hurt always leads us to hidden sources; hurt always leads us to admitting something, to examining the way we are presently inhabiting the world, or not inhabiting it; to the way are hurting or have hurt others. Hurt is the stranger at the door telling us that something radical has to change.
Hurt always seems to arrive with an intent far beyond our immediate understanding - an uninvited guest carrying a gift we would rather refuse and whom we certainly do not want in our house. It uncovers the bodies we have buried, the brave selves we abandoned for approval, and the false bargains we struck just so that we could belong and get along. Hurt reveals the distance between the life we live and the larger life we promised ourselves: speaking with a clarity our comfort cannot bear, drowning out the stories we tell to keep the truth at bay.
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