Scars and stripes

Pain is a blunt teacher. It cannot be automated or outsourced. One must sit with it, endure it, rage at it. And if one is lucky, learn from it

- Charles Assisi

I called Vivek Singh, my New Delhibased coach, on a day when I was falling apart.

He hates being called a life coach. Instead, he is described as a self-mastery coach. It was the kind of day on which I didn't want to discuss philosophy or go through Socratic questioning. I just wanted someone to tell me what was happening to me, and why.

"Cut the questions, Vivek," I said. "I don't have the bandwidth. Just give me an opinion on why am I melting down."

It didn't take him too long to nail it.

"You're in pain. And you're grieving," he said. As that was sinking in, he said there was an upside to this. "How would you even know it was pain if you hadn't known joy? The reason this hurts is because you fear losing joy. That's not weakness. That's the cost of being human."

Those lines have stayed with me. Once heard, you can't unhear them. And the truth is that none of us can escape the apprenticeship of pain. We don't ask for it, but life drafts us into it anyway.