Where I grew up, there was an old man who drove his riding lawn mower into town several times a week. Everyone talked about him as if he were crazy. But one time, he gave me a little piece of wisdom, and I never forgot it.
I ran into him at the car wash one afternoon. He came around the corner after hearing me struggle with some coins that were stuck in the slot. He jiggled the mechanism and cracked it with his hand. The coins fell, and I had suds for my car.
After I washed my Chevy Chevette, I found him at a picnic table and thanked him again. We got to talking, and he told me of his time in the military. His early years in Sarasota. And then he lowered his voice and looked toward the mountains in the distance. He said he had a secret to life he’d like to pass on to me. I was happy to listen. This is a rough translation of what I remember him saying:
We are all born into pain, screaming white-hot pain. It starts as a newborn and never fades. Fortunately, we get used to it…build a resistance. Like Superman’s invulnerability under a yellow sun.
But during tough times in life, this background pain comes roaring back. We are suddenly aware.
When our defenses are already frayed. When we open a box of Krytonite inadvertently, or a shard of the green crystal is placed in our path, we are overwhelmed. The usual pain that comes with bad days, and the residual pain that suddenly comes flooding back in.
But like everything else, if we get a heads-up, we are warned, we can be ready for it and survive.
Superman’s Background Pain
It’s like emerging from the womb on another planet with crushing gravity. Back on Earth, this pressure could crush ribcages, even cold-formed rocks. But if you are born on this unique planet, with a red sun, you don’t notice the added pull.
Rocket to a planet with much less gravity, and you might suddenly feel like a superhero.
Come from Krypton to Earth, and with the super-solar power of the yellow sun, your defenses are suddenly ramped up. Superman can suddenly fly and deflect bullets. No back aches.
And yet if this tough shell is stripped away by kryptonite, a piece of his beginnings in the universe, Superman suddenly feels everything. Splinters, punches. Like Superman, a small dose of our origin can also waylay us. We can all be devastated. (The lawnmower man mentioned that our origins can be our own Kryptonite. Little slivers of our genesis that can pierce us. I still think about what he meant by this.)
This residual pain stays just off stage for most of our lives. Yet, when trauma hits, that tolerance to baseline pain evaporates.
A flood of exponentially more pain and suffering. More than the trauma itself inflicts. And we are set adrift. Abruptly, we notice the new pain and the agony we keep at bay.
Kryptonite Awakening the Pain
But we aren’t susceptible to Krytonite. We can’t be hurt by it. Unfortunately, humans have their own weaknesses.
A toxic relationship, a break-up, a lost job, the loss of someone. That one person who sends us into a nosedive. A character flaw that wipes us out at every turn.
When cataclysms hit, the dam holding back the ambient pain can fail. We feel it all. We are suddenly more susceptible to the pain that’s always present. It shimmers into existence like the background noise of the universe.
Perhaps that’s why drugs work so well. The legal and illegal variety. They block the receptors on this invisible pain we don’t notice, but always carry. Suddenly, drugs take up the responsibility of canceling it out. The muscles we use to hold it off can relax. We escape the hurt for a brief time…and it feels amazing.
When the drugs wear off, that native pain returns, in some cases, even more intense for a time. Our bodies are brutally honest with us for a while…and some will seek out that relief again as soon as possible.
The natural safeguards get stretched back and forth and lose effectiveness at guarding the gate. We need protection and will resort to anything that might put Krypton back together again.
Krypto to the Rescue
I never met up with the car wash man again. Only passing him on his lawnmower from time to time. His thoughts aren’t scientific and may not even be true, but I have found value in looking at hard times and pain from this perspective.
The hurt is constant for most of us anyway. After a difficult week, month, year, I know we come away with a different perspective.
We earn a newfound respect for the depths life can take us to. Next time, we aren’t caught off guard and are ready for it. If we are locked and loaded, we can set those pain levels back to bearable.
We can trust that those dark months don’t last forever. Pain is a constant in the universe, like gravity. But we can prepare for its warping effect. Our resistance will return. And we don’t have to face it alone.
In some cases, we can get help from outside our own person.
Krypto the Super Dog can pull us out of a crater. (and aren’t all dogs and cats superheroes?) A friend can take us out to dinner.
Krypto may drag us back into the sunlight.
We recharge while someone else steps in front of the bullets to shield us for a while. Like Batman tossing that Kryptonite into a lead box. Giving Superman’s cells the chance to absorb the light he needs to heal and repel the gravity of pain. END
I wrote about the defenses we can build in our minds, fortresses, like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, to survive the storms of life.
I also wrote about some of the other life lessons Superman has taught me in comic books over the years.