The penny in the pool

There are no appropriate metaphors for pain.

It is so personal.

So uniquely localized for some people and overwhelmingly generalized for others that I may as well try to describe the swimming pool's thoughts on that penny the life guard threw in last summer.

Yes, it broke the surface of the water when it landed.  And it broke every single infinitesimal layer after that -- all the way to the bottom.

It contaminated the chemical imbalances of water whose being was there to kill some things and thrill others.

It was nothing to some and everything to others.

The way the light reflected off of it as it sank into the depths caught the pool off guard.  The total cosmic meaning to the universe was immaterial.

How could something so seemingly small and immaterial matter so much?

In that moment when it broke the water's surface it destroyed something forever, because even though the layers, the molecules, the drops appeared to come back together, they were never the same.  And even though no one else ever knew -- the pool knew.

That is how it is with pain.

Such a singular experience, a lonely, seemingly inconsequential experience, changes everything.

Imagine what something larger does.