Most of my creative friends tell me that pain completely stops creativity for them. I have the opposite feeling about pain. It is a good thing I do, since I feel pain every moment of every day and have since 1985. How I got to where I am is sort of a long story and will probably take a few posts - but I’ve promised a few people that I would tell my story.
When I was seven I started horseback riding. I know people think that you can only ride if you are super wealthy. That wasn’t true in the seventies, it may be true now, I don’t know.
When I was thirteen I won a horse in an essay contest. I wrote five essays about care and my training philosophy and what have you. When she was two years old and I was training her we were shot at.
Horses, especially young horses, don’t like being shot at and she turned into a crazy bucking bronco. I was unseated and fell across the saddle.
I want to say it hurt, but all I remember is numbness and coldness in my left leg.
That was the start of 27 years of treatment, and searching and eventually a diagnosis. Because my symptoms were all in my leg they didn’t think to look at my back until 2005 or so.
Knowing that I broke my back at 15 hasn’t changed my life much. I still take the same medications and do the same exercises. I try not to let the pain control me.
In fact I try to control it. I meditate and do yoga and try to keep myself as active as I can. In fact I have a job that involves being on my feet all day and a lot of heavy lifting. I try to stay as fit as I can and I do a lot of walking meditation.
I know most people see pain as something that stops you, I try to look at it as a way to focus myself and my life. I look at my accident as a basically positive. I may not have the life I though I would have but I never would have had as creative a life as I do now without that accident.
So pain is a creative, not a destructive force in my life.
How about you guys? Do you have things that you thought would be a hindrance that turned out to be a blessing?
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