I was looking at my son the other day, when he had no shirt on. He has a scar about 10cm (4inches) long on his shoulder. He dislocated it playing football and the scar is the result of the operation to reattach ligaments, that sort of thing.

A scar is a physical record of earlier pain that has made us the complex and, hopefully, balanced individual that we are today. Pain is integral to life and we all experience it. It is an interesting phenonemon that, largely through medical advances, we have come to see pain as completely negative. This was not always the case. Primitive cultures often viewed pain as not only unavoidable but also a path to a more complete person. It was integral to so many initiation ceremonies across the world that it is likely that it vested something in a young man that they would have had difficulting gaining without it, generalised perhaps as "maturity".

Of course pain does not only arise from physical discomfort. Emotional pain has, perhaps, an even more profound impact on our sense of completeness as a human being. Think back to your first romantic disaster. Would you want to go back to how you were then, I certainly would not. I am much more comfortable with who I am now.

There are two things to take from this:

1. The pain that you have experienced in your life is part of who you are. Discarding it is neither possible or desirable. It gives you balance, enables you to empathise and provides a contrast that enables your joyous moments to shine in their true brilliance.

2. Pain is something that you cannot protect your children against and if you could you would deny them their humanity. As they become capable of understanding, teaching them of the inevitability of pain in their lives is an important part of your role as a parent.

Like everything else your response to the pain you experience is your choice. You can choose to be scared of it and repress your memories of prior painful incidents or you can choose to accept it and embrace it as an inevitable and essential part of life and who you are. I choose the latter.

With thanks to Richard Hall at Bene Diction Blogs On who got me thinking about the topic. Oh, and, unlike Richard, on the matter of beer, I discovered half a dozen bottles of 10-year old home brewed stout the other day, which were surprisingly drinkable.