>> I once saw a list of the ten most painful
>> experiences that a human being can experience
>> in a lifetime.
>
> This comment has stuck in my head since I read
> your post, which, ok, was only this morning.
> But I was struck by how revealing such a list
> would be about how we work. So much of our
> behavior, individual or as a society, is driven
> by what makes us hurt.
>
> I tried Googling for such a Top 10 list, but I
> didn't turn up anything. Do you know where this
> list might be online, or do you remember what
> was on it? I'd be pretty interested.

I also tried searching for it, not only on Google, but also on InfoTrac, ProQuest, and EBSCOhost (those are article databases that my college subscribes to). I didn't see anything similar to what I remember reading. But I also remember that I was reading the list on a pamphlet or a paper article of some sort, and the year was either 1997 or 1998. I was 17 when I read it. Here is what I can remember from the list, 8 or 9 years later:

- divorce
- abuse
- suicide of a loved one
- chronic physical pain
- having your home burn down
- severe poverty
- losing your job
- losing a family member

That's only 8; I can't remember what the other 2 might have been. (There were other types of painful events that happened, but I don't remember which of those were or were not on that list.) Also, I remember that I counted some of the things that were close-but-not-quite; for example, my family never experienced divorce, but there was a long period of separation. Also, our house never burned down - we lost it by foreclosure (sorta). But the house was the dream home that my family had saved up for 15 years to build, and it was a few years from being paid off at the time that we lost it. There was a lot of pain from that experience, and from the slum that we moved into. I also remember that "extreme physical pain" was one of the few things that had never happened to us. I was really grateful for it at the time (even while a small part of me feared that it was next on the list).

As it turned out, I did actually experience intense physical pain (the kind that leaves you writhing on the floor in agony) 2 or 3 years ago. The doctors couldn't find anything on the x-rays, and my best guess was that some nerve bundle had gotten pinched hard in the middle of the night. I woke up with what felt like a serrated knife was stabbing into my lower back, with the whole left side of my back on fire, and a cracked glass sword shoved into my whole left arm (parallel, not perpendicular, to the bones). After one week of that, I started having involuntary muscle contractions on the left side of my back, and those cascaded into a whole new world of pain. The pain lasted for about 1 month total, so it didn't qualify as "chronic" (which, according to WebMD, is a minimum of 3 months)... but it still turned my world into a blinding ball of pain. They tried putting me on some of the strongest painkillers out there, and nothing the ER had would even touch it. (That stuff made the world spin, that's for sure; but a spinning world of pain is still a world of pain.) I started going to occupational therapy, for lack of any better options.

I read about how Job (from the book of Job in the Bible) had a lot of terrible things happen to him all at once, and how all he wanted was a chance to talk to God and get an explanation. I didn't want that -- I wanted God to experience the same thing that I was experiencing.

I knew that the pain was not a punishment, and that I did not deserve it. I don't think that I was angry at God. (But it hurt so much! The only time that I was not in agony was when I was asleep!) But if I really was one of his children, if his spirit really did live within me, and if I really was experiencing all of this pain, then I *had* to know that God was not just staying aloof of the whole situation, looking at it from some objective distance. I had to know that he was sharing this pain with me.

Then I had a weird experience a week later (halfway through that Month Of Pain). On a Wednesday evening, between 7:15 and 7:30 pm, the pain suddenly and completely went away. The joy was just indescribable, and I was dancing around the apartment. Then the pain faded back again, but the joy didn't leave. I don't know how I knew, but I *knew* that God had heard my prayer. He really was with me throughout the whole experience, and for the next two weeks, I could smile and laugh and be myself again. The pain was still there, but it was *just* physical pain -- it only hurt my body. It couldn't touch my spirit, and it was God's spirit touching my spirit that gave me joy. During those two weeks, I felt the presence of God so closely that it was greater than the pain itself, which was still a 9 or a 10 (on a scale from 1 to 10).

- Enigma