The Child and Pain

As long as he could remember, he had suffered from pain. He did not know his father—a drug addict who conceived him high—and so life was something incomplete, flawed, for him from the very beginning. His mother could not bear either her own suffering or her son's, and at the age of five, she admitted him to the hospital. 

That first time the little boy found himself within the state walls, he heard a phrase from a doctor that initially seemed strange to him: "If you wake up and nothing hurts, it means you're dead."

After some time, his mother took him back. But soon he was admitted to the hospital again, and that day was the last time he saw his mother. Since then, he remained there, and the hospital became his world. He matured quickly, ahead of his years. In the hospital corridors, amidst the smell of iodine and quiet moans, he saw his life in a different light. He watched his ward neighbors—those who died with dignity and silence, and those who cursed the heavens, everyone and everything.

The pain the boy felt turned out to be his teacher. Along with it, he grasped wisdom long before adulthood. He saw that some, unable to endure the inhuman pain, committed suicide, preferring non-existence to this terrible truth. The boy began to read—medical books on the nature of pain, existential philosophy. He understood the existential meaning of his suffering, and even though the pain did not lessen because of it, he began to value it, for to him, it became synonymous with life.

Dialogue with the Doctor

Several months later, during his first long stay in the hospital, from which he rarely left, another doctor approached him. Wishing to lighten the mood, he jokingly asked the child:

"What hurts, little one?"

The boy, without looking away, answered with disarming seriousness:

"I would phrase that question differently: what doesn't hurt?"

The doctor froze.

"And what is it?" he quietly asked.

"My soul," the boy replied.

The answer was so adult and profound, so filled with inner calm, that the doctor looked at him differently, realizing: before him was not just a suffering child, but a true philosopher.

Heroes of Suffering

The boy was a patient at a hospice—a refuge for the deprived. The realization of the fact—that those around him were people given up on by medicine, family, and society—made his commitment to life even more fierce and meaningful. He was not pathetic in any sense of the word. Unlike many healthy people, he was alive, and his pain was proof of that. He never whined, although the pain in his body was aching.

The boy grew up among books. While his peers were making friends in the yard, he found his on the pages of myths and fairy tales. His mentors, his true friends, became those who knew about eternal pain and suffering firsthand, yet managed to preserve the greatness of spirit. He wanted to be like them, not like superheroes from comic books.

The boy conducted endless internal dialogues with Sisyphus, who, groaning under a giant boulder, answered him: "Your path is not the summit, boy. Your path is effort. Movement. Death comes when you stop. Keep pushing your pain. That is your greatness."

The little boy looked at Prometheus, who, with fire in his palms, explained the cost of courage: "The eagle always comes. There will always be a price for the gift. But the fire you brought to people burns inside. If you burn, then you exist. Accept the price and do not let go of the flame."

He heard the moans of Tantalus, who, exhausted by eternal hunger and thirst, whispered: "Suffering is not the punishment of the gods; it is your unique destiny. If you realize it, you have the right to despise it. Do not seek peace; seek dignity in your curse."

Fairy-tale heroes also spoke with the boy. The Giant, who drove winter from his garden, instructed him: "Your garden is your soul. And only you decide who enters it and when it should bloom."

And even the Little Prince, the gentlest of all, told him: "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." And these words best explained his own wisdom, which was invisible to others.

Once, during another flare-up, he was given a strong painkiller. The world suddenly became soft, weightless, and quiet. Pain, his faithful and loud companion, vanished. And at that moment, he realized he had died. The phrase uttered by the doctor during the morning round many years ago pierced him with a force no physical ailment could achieve. The absence of pain was not peace, but absolute emptiness, non-existence.

The boy made his motto the famous saying of Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotsk: "If you have pain, invite it to dance." Since then, he knew that his own life was his examiner. He firmly grasped that "no one promised it would be easy," but he achieved the main thing: he conquered the fear of death. If someone asked him about the meaning of his existence, he would answer with the words of the philosopher: "That which does not kill me makes me stronger." This was his formula for life. For he knew that death would come when complete silence arrived. But as long as his body cried out, he danced.

The Last Dance

The boy refused painkillers, preferring to feel life in all its painful fullness. But on the day the pain intensified, reaching unimaginable limits, he realized this was his last dance.

The light in the ward dimmed. Pain became him, the last and loudest chord of his existence. In that moment, as the boy's breathing became ragged, he saw his beloved characters, his unseen mentors, suddenly come to life.

Sisyphus, Prometheus, Tantalus, and the Giant—four great sufferers—gently, with reverent sorrow, lifted the boy's emaciated body. They became his last solace, his guides into the silence. Carefully laying him on an invisible stretcher, they slowly, silently, carried him away into the distance.

Following them, escorting the little boy on his final journey, were Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotsk, and the Little Prince. And all of them, as one, admired the child's courage and resilience of spirit—the very spirit that pain could not take from him.

A few minutes later, the on-duty doctor entered the ward. The bed was empty.

"Well, did he run away, philosopher?" he said with dry sarcasm.

The doctor knew perfectly well that the boy could not run away, as he was born without legs and arms. The little boy had suffered from phantom pains in his non-existent limbs since birth, as if he had lost them long ago. That is why, seeing the empty cot, the cynic who never slept in the doctor uttered "ran away"—as the bitterest and most sincere wish his soul could ever have. He wished the boy had limbs, so he could leave. To escape this terrible place called life, which was so unnatural for a child. After all, he should have been healthy and happy.

The boy died. And at that moment, his pain finally ceased to be phantom.