It’s pretty sweet to walk a few blocks, jump on a bus and less than thirty minutes later be smack-dab in the middle of New York City. I’m not sure if I’d want it to be my entire life, but for a month? I love it. Add in the fact that it’s fall and the weather has been a-m-a-z-i-n-g and I’m finding out more about the true joys of aunthood every day… it’s so good.
My brother and I ventured into the city yesterday and were able to get into a Broadway show for $27.00 each. We won the lottery. The show? We hadn’t really ever heard of it before, but with five Tony’s and some high recommendations from people in the business, we thought we’d give Peter and the Starcatchers a chance. We weren’t disappointed.
I laughed a lot at the witty lines and ridiculous facial expressions and while the show painted a new picture of Peter Pan’s life for us to consider, the following line was the one that really stuck with me.
‘It’s supposed to hurt. That’s how you know it meant something.’
In a dialogue between Peter and Molly (the ‘Wendy-like’ character in a story about how Peter got to Neverland in the first place) where good-byes are painful and heart-wrenching, Molly spouts this out.
As I sat in my seat, I churned these words over and over again in my head. Is that a true statement? Do the things that mean more, hurt more? I reflected over my past wounds and deepest heartaches, recognizing on some level there’s some truth to it.
The people that hurt me the most are often the ones that matter most to me.
The hardest people to leave are the ones that I care the most about.
The things I love doing are the things that break my heart when I think about never doing them again.
So, really… the pain results in the absence of the thing that matters most. It results in the absence of loyalty or love, or the absence of someone’s physical presence, or the absence of getting to do what you feel like you were made to do. But perhaps it’s not ever ‘supposed’ to hurt at all…it’s the just the reality of how things are. It would seem that the ‘supposed’ to should actually be that the people we love/love us would never hurt us, that we would never have to leave those we care about, and we would always be able to do the things we love. Right?
I wonder if the ‘supposed to hurt’ is the way we now dictate how much something or someone means to us. Sometimes it’s probably how we decide whether or not to remain in relationships: ‘the thought of not being with you is too painful to bear, so I must care about you too much to ever let you go’. Perhaps the pain we feel can actually be the result of other things, too…and we too easily mix it up with love and passion (maybe we have an unhealthy attachment/addiction and the thought of releasing is devastating…even though the thing/person didn’t necessarily mean as much as we thought it did).
This is the kind of quote from something that you remember and then take with you other places. You make it your facebook status. You tweet it. You make it look all cool and decorated and put it on your mirror. You remind yourself each day that you’re supposed to hurt because that’s how you know things matter.
And, I kind of think that’s bogus and dangerous–especially the more I think about it.
It’s not supposed to hurt…. even if it does sometimes. Pain shouldn’t be the norm, it shouldn’t be what we settle for, it shouldn’t be what we expect. It’s okay (and I think good) for us to believe that sometimes the people we love/love us won’t hurt us, that sometimes we won’t have to say good-bye, that sometimes we can do the things we love for the rest of our lives.
I think this kind of quote enables me to feel sorry for myself and brings out my inner drama queen. It causes me to think more about my current circumstances and forget about the eternal and the joy I have in that….all the time. A place where I’m reminded that there’s no pain, no suffering, no tears.
Do the things that matter most hurt most?
Maybe sometimes.
But not all the time…
And pain should never be our gauge for how much something/someone means to us.
It’s not supposed to hurt.
It can still mean something even without the pain.
Be wary of the words that can so easily be written on our hearts if they are not truth….even if it sounds catchy and witty and, well, true. Dig deeper.
We must.