Remember the place of pain… to avoid it

Written by Leda Glyptis
12th January 2023

OK, so there’s this Stormzy song… (go away… I go to the gym… I hear things I wouldn’t normally listen to).

Hold onto the pain to remember to avoid it. That’s what learning looks like.

I don’t know what it’s called… (seriously… go away… it’s the gym… I am not listening… plus I am 45 next birthday… seriously, my music tastes are kinda still in the 90s so this is all very foreign to me, be gentle).

The line that I actually heard while not paying attention… (I bring a book to the gym, so what… go away) said “f*** letting go, I’ll keep the pain”.

So of course, me being me, I heard that, thought ‘oh, now that… I like…’ and then went to the library. Figuratively speaking.

I googled the living daylights out of this.

And I discovered nothing useful for my purposes. I found out that Stormzy is lauded and loved in some circles for his authentic warmth and creativity and that he is loathed in other circles because of some extremely ill-judged Twitter interventions deemed hateful and subsequent apologies deemed by some to be inauthentic.

I also found that the song is about some parental-abandonment-related complexity. So all in all, none of this works for me and I really should leave well alone.

And yet.

It’s a good line.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day, right? Not that I know enough about Stormzy to call him broken, a clock or indeed right. Go away. You know what I mean. And what I mean is this: it’s a good line. Whether he actually means for me to hear what I heard or not, it’s a good line.

In the 1994 film Il Postino (The Postman), Massimo Troisi, in his role as Mario Ruoppolo, says, “Poetry doesn’t belong to those who write it, it belongs to those who need it.”

He is also thinking… go away, I need this, so I am keeping this. Only he didn’t say it because he’s a sensitive soul. Watch the movie, you will know what I mean.

So I get to keep the line, because I need it. And we all get to keep the pain, because we need it.

I mean this.

Not the expletives, we don’t need those. But the pain? We need it.

That’s where learning comes from. That’s where not doing it again comes from. That’s where not letting yourself back into that place comes from. Not forgetting how it feels. That’s where it comes from.

So keep the pain.

And although I am sure there are a million pages I could write here about family and personal relationships where remembering past hurts leads to self-protection, I am actually talking about work. And I say: keep the pain.

Remember the closet of shame? It’s literally the opposite of that.

That really embarrassing moment when you hoped the earth would swallow you because you had messed up, over-reached or under-prepared, under-estimated or over-indexed… and it all blew up in your face… that feeling? Remember it.

That time when the client or your boss was so livid… and they were right, no two ways about it, they were right. There was no if, no but, no moral high ground. They were right. You were wrong. And it felt like s**t. Remember that.

The time your colleagues kinda, sorta backstabbed you… or that time you were thrown under the bus… or that time you were lied to… or that time you were put down or treated poorly or treated like you were expendable or sacrificed to someone’s own ambition and inadequacy… remember how that felt?

Of course you do.

Keep remembering.

Not because I believe in revenge. Actually, not in the slightest. The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there (LP Hartley, The Go-Between, 1953). I don’t want you staying mad. I don’t even want you plotting revenge. The people who hurt or diminished you matter less than little.

There is a song that my mum sang to me as a lullaby when I was a child. A song by a singer called Kostas Hatzis. It goes like this:

When you look at the world from high up, say from a plane, it all looks like a child’s drawing and here you are taking it seriously… it all looks small… houses like matchboxes, people smaller than ants. The biggest palace looks like a toy … and here you are taking it seriously.

He has a beautiful gravelly voice, he does. It’s a gorgeous song to fall asleep to.

Beloved, don’t cry, he says. Let’s go high up together if that’s what you will. Look at the earth from the moon and you will find… perspective is what you make of it.

So.

Hold onto the pain.

You are thinking ‘go away, you killed the moment, I liked that song, something good was happening’, and now we are on the same page of pain and failed projects and corporate frustration I say… well yeah. That was the point.

That’s all I want from you.

I need you to never forget how it felt in the moment. The bad moment.

Because you can’t fix what is in the past and you can’t fix people (or maybe you can but seriously… don’t take that on) and you shouldn’t want revenge or retribution or even restitution. All I want is that you remember how it felt, how the place you don’t want to be back in felt and smelt and looked. And how all the warning signs of nearing that place felt and smelt and looked.

That is all.

That is what progress looks like. Not exacting revenge. Just remember not to let yourself and your team and your company and your community to be back in that place of pain.

That’s what learning looks like. Keeping the pain. To remember to avoid it.

#LedaWrites

Leda Glpytis