To the death?...No, to the pain.

So I just finished this conversation with lada about my previous post and my apparent fascination with pain and being in pain. It is simply this: pain equals life. Or rather the struggle to maintain life. What's so wrong with being obsessed with wanting to be alive? Nothing at all. It's perhaps the most elementary of all human instincts. It is something very animalistic, primal, and basic that we all exhibit as common shareholders of the DNA for Homo sapiens. To feel pain is to truly know life.

For me, the simple definition of death is the absence of pain. If you were to hack a corpse to pieces, it's not going to suddenly jump up and shout for mercy. The nerve endings aren't transmitting any chemical signals; the body is just so much cordwood. The same if someone became calloused and shut themselves off from the world. Emotionally they are numb and for all intents and purposes dead in that way -- if not medically. This line of thought could also be extended to the spiritual side of life as well. Gets a little more tricky with people's individual beliefs but it can still hold. If you can't feel pain than you are either medically deceased or emotionally numb to the point you might as well be some zombie wandering around a shopping mall in Pittsburgh.

I'd like to go into more detail about this right now, especially concerning my thoughts on the pain of heartbreak and such, but I'm running on an hour of sleep and hopped up on Robotussin so it'll have to wait another day.