I’m not one who deals with personal bodily impairment or suffering with much stoic dignity.  By that, I’m not implying that I’m a loud complainer or boisterous oucher.  By no means at all.  On the contrary, most peeps would never know when I’m really hurting because a most profound silence hovers about me.  No, I do not suffer suffering silently.  I do not suffer suffering.  I try to embrace it silently as an assassin would his mark with a garrote in a crowded, noisy movie theatre: stealthily, masterfully, and deadlier-than-thou.  I strive to counterpart the mentality of a raccoon that would intrepidly chew its own paw off to free itself from a trap.  Ah…suffering, impairment, and mortal inflictions—are these all not traipsings of a trickstering trap? Rip, if you can, what afflicts you out of the body vital.  Damn.  I say enjoin the battle and to the destructive element… 

…hold on.  Who am I fooling?  When it hurts, it hurts.   And healing can take many paths, but often starts with a lament.  I mean, I awoke with a "crick" or spasm in my left shoulder blade today.  Now the chances of getting a free massage for it are not good, but much less if I just smile all day and merely broadcast about that “it would pleasure me greatly to have my back rubbed.”    Why?  Because the back-rubbers who are disposed to help out the stricken like me will probably be too busy today rubbing the backs of those genuinely reporting such an ouch as an ouch.  So it’s okay to say “ouch” if it’s real and you’re not just knee-jerking for pity but authentically seeking healing comfort and human touch. That’s the way, in this age of largely pre-psychic humanity, ouches get rubbed.  And it’s always discretionally wiser to address the ouch, if possible, amidst a support ring of back-rubbers rather than rabidly seizing a microphone in an airport terminal and screaming it out like a banshee.  (And with blogging in particular, it seems to me, we sometimes forget that the blog can broadcast quite indiscretionally.)   So I think it comes down, sooner or later for all of us, to learn to admit to “ouch” (better expressed unto those with the compassion to listen, but in most cases, better expressed in some manner than never expressed at all) …or to otherwise closely study an entrapped raccoon so as to master the possibilities of the technique of silent self-gnawing supercession.