Beauty in Pain

When did pain become beautiful? At what point did we say “that joyous person, gleefully communing with friends, celebrating life, and striving to better the world: they’re ugly. They need more pain.” What caused us to turn from celebrating a life well lived to glorifying a life miserably wallowed?

Pain was never supposed to be beautiful. There can undoubtedly be beauty in pain, but it’s never because of the pain itself, but rather the way a soul shines in the midst of it. A child dying of cancer isn’t beautiful, but seeing them overcome their despair to smile and encourage another young patient most certainly is. Where is the beauty in a depressed soul living every moment in anguish, unless they too find a way to receive solace from friends and loved-ones?

The perversion of beauty is not merely a philosophical nuance either, but rather terrifying burden across all people. We have said, “you, with the heart that’s aching and soul that is struggling to find a reason to live, wallow in it; it makes you beautiful” and “you, poor child, who lives in fear every time your parents fight, that they might divorce and tear apart your family, or, worse, turn their wrath upon you, relish in your horror, for it makes your soul shine.”

No longer do we encourage the depressed soul to seek out friends, counselors, or help of any kind, because “a soul in pain is beautiful.” We encourage kids to be “weird and alone,” cutting themselves off from all forms of community and support, and then wonder why they act out against their peers. Weirdness comes in all flavors and moralities, but no matter the kind it’s worthless without being shared.

When an injured man is rushed to the emergency room with a broken leg, bones piercing out of the skin, no one stares and rejoices in “the marvel of modern medicine.” The marvel is not that a leg can be broken, but rather that we can put it back together. So too the beauty is not in the destruction of the leg, but in the learning to walk again.

The “tortured soul” is not the pinnacle of human beauty; it is merely one more obstacle in this broken world that all people, beautiful or not, must encounter, and what determines their beauty is not the having been tortured, but rather the act of persisting through it and coming out better on the other side.