I STAND ON THE PRECIPICE between my past and the rest of my life, which is indeed where each of us stands in every moment.

The difference is that from where I stand the path diverges from the predictable future in which many of us progress if we don’t consciously seek change — into the unpredictable.

This is the path which we create. And that takes wanting to change.

Needing to.

And I need my life to change.

But there’s nothing outside of me to alter. I only need to look within, deeply and truly, and let what’s within come without.

I’m still working through physical pain. This will take time. My brain still sends me the physical sensations it’s conditioned to send, protecting me from the emotional pain I’ve suppressed.

But every day I’m doing the work; the body will change when the brain understands I don’t need the protection anymore.

While the body has yet to fully shift, my mind has transformed.

I’m now living life knowing I’m not broken, instead of trying not to break.

And with that understanding, I’m free.

Everything had to happen exactly as it has to get to this point. Everything.

From childhood until now — the challenges when I was a kid, the pain as I’ve crossed over into adulthood. I wouldn’t change a damn thing. It’s all led me here. To an absolute desire for genuine understanding.

“Consciousness only comes from suffering,” writes the psychoanalyst James Hollis in ​Under Saturn’s Shadow​. “Without some form of suffering, physical, emotional, spiritual, we’re content to rest easy in the old dispensation, the old comforts, the old dependencies.”

This short book is absolutely incredible. It unpacks the unspoken longings, fears, and complexes all men specifically harbor, yet seldom confront or share.

We carry wounds. Primal wounds we hardly know are there. So we chase status symbols and exterior displays of what it means to be a man, thinking this will fill the hole within.

Inside, we’re afraid. We’re sad. We’re angry.

And without understanding this, without confronting our deepest emotions deriving from childhood, our relationship or lack thereof with parents, and social expectations, we’ll forever remain lost, channeling our energy into doing the things we’re conditioned to believe make us successful or worthy of love.

Yet our souls yearn for meaning. Our hearts ache for healing.

That’s why many of us feel chronic pain, both men and women. The physical wound is a roadmap into the psychological wound if we’re willing to take the road less traveled and go there. Hollis writes:

Please read that quote a couple of more times…

We need the wounds. If we strive to understand and overcome them, the wounds which aim to hurt indeed may do the opposite, acting as the very fuel which makes life worth living.

I was having dinner with one of my best friends this week and he said, What if you don’t see this as just healing your back? What if you’re just healing and the back pain going away is just a byproduct of that?

I didn’t see it like this until he said that, and it blew my mind. The pain urges me to know myself.

That’s what it is — a friend who wants to help; but I got this now, I tell my brain. The pain no longer serves me. I’m strong enough to let the emotion arise, and I can handle it.

For the past six years, I’ve been seeing my healing as purely physical, as if the body is a machine to be finely tuned. Tighten a nob here, insert screw there.

But the body is not a machine to be fixed without ever suffering another hitch. It’s a work of art, just as the way one lives is an art form.

The brain is the artist, our thoughts the paintbrush.

What will we create?

Not perfection, for that’s what I’m working to let go of, as it’s part of the reason for the pain.

Art that moves us doesn’t represent perfection. It expresses the full breadth of life, and that comprises both beauty and pain, for they are often one and the same.

We mustn’t strive for perfection, but beauty through each of our divine uniqueness.

The body works just as nature intended. We must heal our minds, our hearts, our soul, for nature to take its course.

I’ve wanted so badly for this pain to end. I sought every modality and tried what felt like anything and everything to erase this pain and make it nothing but a memory in totality.

Yet life is not black and white, healed or broken.

It’s nuanced. In that nuance is meaning, experience, purpose, strength.

As much as I want this pain to be gone forever, it’s going to rear its head from time to time. Maybe not as back pain, but we’re gonna feel pain in life no matter what.

That pain is part of what makes us nuanced; but now, I’m learning how to truly deal with it. I’m understanding what it means.

By working with our wounds, we become stronger. We grow. We understand ourselves if we’re willing not to numb the pain, but listen to it. I will be 100% healed, but that does not mean pain is gone forever.

Be easy on yourself.

This is a process, and it’s going to take time and space.

I had my first therapy session last week. I cried and talked freely about things I’d never spoken about. For the rest of the day, I felt drained. I came home, and I slept. Therapy is gonna be so helpful in this, it’s really wonderful.

We’re going on an adventure. We’re never coming back.

Into the valley of soul, the ocean of lungs, the mountains of emotion. We’re exploring them, as if for the first time. Will you join me?

If you don’t, it’s okay. I may have to go alone.

I’m ready.

I’m breathing.

I’m scared.

I’m alive.

And I won’t return the same.

And looking at you, the kid I was, I hope you know I’ll always love you.

I hope you know I don’t judge you anymore. Nobody needs to know what you went through, because I do. Life got hard, and you shut down. You did your best; you were just a kid.

That pain has stayed with you until now. That tension has stayed in your body, asking to be released.

I hug that Vinny. I put my arms out and around him, and let him know I’m here. If nobody else is, I am.

What you’re dealing with is hard, I tell him.

And one day, the wounds will make you look within.

And you’ll be so, so grateful for everything that’s happened.

So grateful for what you’ve been through, who it’s made you.

I got you, kid. We’re just Vinny. Don’t need to be anything more.

But we’re growin’ up.