Tameka Cooper

Happily Surviving the Pain Tameka Cooper

The bonding caused by pain increases cooperation among people. It has been duly noted that pain promotes empathy, which is essential to social con-nection. The way you choose to respond to life's tragedies will determine whether you develop the attitude of a survivor or a victim. Choosing to be a survivor of any kind is being the face of something tragic. So even though we've been broken, we still deserve to reap the benefits of happiness whether it be find-ing yourself, just owning your everyday struggles or being the face of a tragedy while bringing awareness to those that thought they were alone. Because I've been both victim and survivor. Not only will you then feel less guilt over enjoying life's happiness, but ultimately you will truly thank the pain for moving you to the next phase of life and really settling in pure happiness. Pain isn't pleasurable, but relief from pain is. When you have worked out, or completed some other dif-ficult task, you are more likely to give yourself per-mission to enjoy a reward. Not focusing on perfect because perfect is a subjective condition. Anything worthy, anything that aspires towards a greater, higher expression of the self, will involve pain.