Late to comment, but I read this post a few days ago and I wanted to comment under a throw-away account. I can share some feeling with the author, but there's n

Late to comment, but I read this post a few days ago and I wanted to comment under a throw-away account. I can share some feeling with the author, but there's no way I agree that you can be happier with chronic pain. I've been also suffering from chronic pain since I was ~20. I remember it started with mild focusing problem: I would feel unable to concentrate, and every ~60 seconds or so I would have a sensation of disorientation that would break my train of thought. Sounds innocent. I also thought that too, until it started to get worse and I had to start looking for medical advice. I carried on, even though you can imagine that even though there was actually no pain, it's incredibly debilitating. At some point it got so bad, I remember I had occasions where I would feel "lost" in the middle of a room, I would try to remember what I was doing but as I was doing that I would re-start from 0, and ask myself: what was..? Fortunately it wouldn't last for very long (maybe a couple of minutes),and I actually never lost the "memory", I would just be unable to think. I still believe this was the onset of everything that followed. This feeling got less and less frequent over the months. After 3 years I didn't have any of those "lost in a room" moments. But as this feeling disappeared, I started to have tingling pain in the fingers, that later extended to the whole arms. I later (after years, medical examinations, etc) discovered that what was actually happening was muscle stiffness in the forearms, then neck, and then the whole body, which created varying levels of suboptimal blood circulation, and subsequently increased stiffness resulting in a negative feedback loop. At various times, I had rippling muscles, like this: http://youtu.be/vKgFtIbCzcg http://youtu.be/vKgFtIbCzcg Some other times I could strike any muscle with a finger with minimal force, without pain at all, and it would form an isolated contraction, so small I could actually draw shapes on the biceps, which is something I would have always fun doing to show doctors. But the biggest problem became very soon to be pain. Everywhere. Due to stiffness, fatigue, or whatever. I was doing piano lessons since a couple of years, but I couldn't take it anymore. After a session I would feel stiffer, I couldn't articulate the fingers smoothly as I could at the beginning of the lesson itself. It was something that I loved, and the more I tried the more I would feel powerless. Very, very slowly I stopped doing any piano entirely, because I would only feel enraged, bad, and depressed. I had to slow down work. A lot. Typing became a serious issue. I switched countless keyboards. I would before "think while typing" and correct/fix the code along the way. I now "think before doing anything". One of the things that I always liked was hiking. I hiked a lot, 3-12 hours, any elevation gain, any distance, no problem. I could hike slowly and think, or I could just as well hike to stop thinking, which is also incredibly effective. It's the perfect stress/pain valve, until last year I started having the same issue in the legs too. Again, very slowly. Sometimes I would just feel tired, and recover quickly. But over time the recovery took longer and longer, until now it seems that I cannot properly recover even from mild activity. The biggest "a-ha" moment for me was two years ago, when I stopped doing piano. The author of the post says it's "happiness" and enjoying the small things. I don't think so. For me it was the moment I gave up. I tried fucking hard doing everything I could to fix the issue. I spent literally everything I had on medical doctors, visits, etc. I tried alternative medicine. I explored every detail I could, and failed. At this point you just let go, and accept the problem as it is. I'm basically forced to care for the issue, otherwise I wouldn't work at all, but does this make me happy? I'm sorry, but no. I'd give you anything so I don't have to suffer continuously, so that I could do piano again, or hike without having to worry about pain later, or even sit at the computer without feeling pain. The way I work now is very different. When I want to work on a problem, or do any activity, I have to focus hard, "zone out" completely if you will, to the point that anything beyond the problem at hand has any space. It's hard to do. But you can become good at it, like everything else. And it's not a method for stress relief, because the moment you "let go" the pain is brought back too. Maybe I'm missing the enlightenment the poster had. But chronic pain is incredibly debilitating. I have moments were I really feel handicapped, even though I can literally do everything. Chronic pain is bad guys, there is no "good" that I can think of :(.