Good.Pain.

I got my first tattoo this week.

Yeah.

It’s a bluebird. A bluebird is a symbolic tattoo given to sailors who have travelled 1,000 nautical miles. Which I have not…but my grandfather has.

William Harry Keeran got his bluebird tattoo as a Navy airplane mechanic during World War 2. He got it on Okinawa, his ship being sent there from Texas after the island was conquered by the Allies. It wasn’t a big tattoo, probably done very cheap and not with the health department approval that mine required. I could see it peeking out from the sleeve of the white v-necked t-shirts he used to wear. On hot days I got the singular thrill of seeing it in full as the white t got exchanged for one of those ribbed undershirts that people call “beaters”.

My family called them muscle shirts. That made sense to me since I believed my grandpa was the strongest man I ever knew. This was the man who raised me. This was the man who taught me how to be a man.

The tattoo was in honor of him, as was the muscle shirt that I wore to get it.

Before I got it done everyone wanted to weigh in on the pain level. Some told me that it didn’t hurt very much, some told stories of crying or passing out. The most vivid was one who said “It’s not that bad, just like having a cat scratch your sunburn”.

That doesn’t sound good at all.

I sat in the chair and watched as the artist prepared the equipment. It was like watching a nurse prepare to take blood. Things were getting unwrapped from sterile plastic and latex gloves were going on. A little disinfectant applied to the skin and we were off.

And yes…it hurt.

Actually, I wouldn’t really say it hurt. It didn’t feel good, but I wouldn’t describe it as hurt. It was just pain. I sat in the chair for an hour of getting a tiny needle injecting paint into my skin, I thought about how this pain felt kinda…well…good. I realized in that chair that I would be writing about good pain.

C.S. Lewis used to say that pain was God’s megaphone to rouse a sleeping world. His point was that pain is an instrument to tell us something is wrong. That there is something that needs some attention. A change needs to be made.
Obviously the body uses pain to let us know that we are sick or the fire is hot or that you aren’t supposed to put needles into your skin.

Unless you have a goal.

An objective

We deal with pain in a lot of ways. Mostly, we try to avoid it. In many situations in life this is a wise policy. It keeps us alive

However, some pain brings us good things. My tattoo hurt, but the pain was going to end with a tattoo that honored my grandfather.

Good pain.

Productive pain.

I didn’t want a sedative or pain reducer. I wanted to feel all of this. It was real and got me where I wanted to go.
Plus, I trusted the artist. He was the one hurting me. He knew what he was doing. He won’t hurt me any more than he has to - and the result will be beautiful.

That is good pain.

When I experience pain I have two major choices. I can mask the pain through whatever my drug of choice might be or I can choose to feel it all and find out what needs to change. I must admit that I have not been a stellar example of this my whole life. I have a history of self-medicating and avoidance. What this does is only masks the pain without addressing the source.
It was only when I decided to follow the pain that my life began to heal. No doubt that it hurts. It hurts like hell, but like the tattoo I believe it ends with something beautiful.

But you have to be honest with the pain.

Don’t look for a quick way out.

Trust the One with the needle.