bell hooks
I think particularly in the Western world, and in the United States especially, people have a vision of healing that is about feeling that you must be free from pain. Other than a vision of healing that says we can restore a sense of balance to our being that may allow us to cope with pain in ways that are restorative. So pain isn’t perceived as the enemy but as the point of possibility and transformation.
I think that vision is really hard to keep alive in a culture that’s always offering people some kind of drug that promises to take the pain away. So many people that I talk to, young people who are lusting for wealth, imagine that there’s some wealth they will achieve that will take pain away in their lives. No matter how much we hear from people who have great wealth about the pain in their lives, people continue to maintain this fiction.
so the whole thing is worth a read, but this is particularly relevant right now.
