Splinters

There’s that feeling when you have run your hand against wood and you know something was left behind. Or when you have foolishly touched a cactus arm thinking you had cleverly avoided any needles, only to be met by that twinge of pricked, lingering pain. Or when you boldly bear your feet on woodsy paths or bridges and then return walking on the side of your soles with that hope to dig out the residual splinter. That is the pain we can learn from.

When the body hurts, it is a call to attend to it. With something as simple and small as a splinter, we rush to relieve ourselves of the root cause of our hurt. We find bright lights and tweezers, trusted tools that can remove the culprit. We enlist the help of those we trust to dig it out with needles we have dipped in rubbing alcohol or burnt with matches. We are willing to contort our bodies or endure that simple surgical discomfort to remove what is causing our pain.

It’s that movement towards pain that determines how to figure out our heal. And all we have to do is listen. If our body hurts, we can hear it. It often halts us from whatever it is we were doing enough to pay attention. We can take the steps we need to find our wellness. We listen to the still voice of our body wincing and we seek remedy.

And what of our heart? When we hurt in our connections, our relationships, our souls…do we do the same thing? Do we seek to find out why the words stung, the tears fell, the heart bruised? Do we pay the same attention to our psyches that we do to our fingers and feet? Do we move towards the pain to investigate or do we find a way to distract our attention to something else that doesn’t result in the same discomfort?

I am learning, in my own splintered style, that the in the pain is the solace. If I can pause for my heart as I do for my body, and seek the hand of a trusted friend or the wisdom of my own being, then I can pull out the splinter, the root of the wincing. It is the pain that is the beacon of understanding. It is the pain we need to move towards.

And after the smooth pull of the tweezers, the infliction is held between the needled tweezers. Then, of course, I stare in wonder at how such a small thing could create such agony. Equally. I marvel that it’s removal creates such relief. I We can look and see what caused the pain, why it hurt, and how it embedded itself. Then the healing begins.

We will still walk on wooden bridges and splintered bark. We will still run our hands over surfaces we believe our smooth and safe. Just as we will continue to open our hearts to the life around us. And when it pricks, we can look with our own light at that small, sweet splinter that gave us a reason to stop, see and heal.