What hurts, teaches

Quae nocent docent ("What hurts teaches")
~ Adages of Erasmus Erasmus (under 31. I, I, 31. "Malo accepto stultus sapit" in Latin text )

Last week while I was sparring in my kali (stick fighting) class, I took a blow to the middle finger of my left hand, resulting in a finger sprain: a swollen, stiff, bruised finger that hurt whenever I tried to bend it.

The lesson I could have learned from this was that maybe I should try something with less risk of injury! But this would have been the wrong lesson. After all, in learning to use any martial art effectively, sooner or later you are going to be injured. If there is no risk of injury, there is also no way of truly gauging the effectiveness of your defensive technique.

This is the problem when we encounter pain, difficulty or struggle when we are learning anything. Is it a signal for us to give up? Maybe the first lesson that 'pain' teaches is a lesson about ourselves, about our tolerance for discomfort in the pursuit of what we purportedly wish to learn. The pain doesn't come with the lesson presented to us on a platter; more often we have to look for the lesson.

Some of the things that I learned from my experience:

• I chose to spar with less protection, using more heavily padded sticks, whereas I could have fought wearing more protection including padded gloves and heavier sticks. So lesson one: sometimes what appears to be the safer option is actually the riskier option.
• I couldn't have been struck on the hand unless my hand was in a position to be hit. So lesson two: keep my empty hand out of harms way (or at least use it effectively to ward off an attack) when defending myself.
• I wasn't even aware that my hand was exposed as a target. So lesson three: Be mindful of where all of your body is and what parts are exposed to attack.

All of these are useful lessons that will stand me in good stead the next time I fight.

However, the experience contained further lessons.

Since I couldn't bend the finger completely under its own power, as part of rehabilitating it, I've had to carefully force it to bend using my uninjured hand. This hurts a lot! But the choice is between experiencing some pain now and rebuilding flexibility while the healing process is taking place or risking not regaining full function. So sometimes short term pain is necessary to prevent future harm.

Pain isn't my teacher of choice. But by listening to it, I may prevent even greater pain in the future, as well as becoming more effective in one of my chosen martial arts.