Coincidental or not, ever since my official departure from Winds of Peace as its leader, I’ve been afflicted by a worsening hip pain.  The discomfort did not stop me from my daily workout routines, however, until two weeks ago.  The ache in my hip and back became both chronic and intense, resulting in an inability to sleep for more than about 60 minutes at a time.  Then I need to get up and walk around for a while before going back to bed for another hour.  Multiple medical consults have failed to achieve any relief; I’ll have another intervention later this week.  Will this be the initiative to end what, for me, has been a painful nightmare?  Time will tell.

I’ve been fortunate throughout my life to have suffered few physical difficulties.  I knew that the ravages of age were undoubtedly compounding within me, but I have worked hard to keep them at bay.  That likely makes me less patient in light of my current malaise.  I don’t have a sense of its rhythm or its source.  Medical folks have massaged, medicated, probed and examined  X-rays, without reaching conclusion.  My pain seemingly worsens every day and I grow a bit panicky.

But it’s not the intensity or even the constancy of the pain that bothers me the most.  Rather, it’s the uncertainty about whether it will eventually come to an end.  And more importantly, whether that end will be a positive one.  It’s the uncertainty that is disabling.

Living with this reality for the past two weeks and analyzing my temperament about it has engulfed me with self-pity from time to time, as I have wondered whether this is the way my life will be from now on, whether the days of freedom of movement and happy expressions of physical capacities are suddenly things of the past.   I continue to push myself to the limits of pain tolerance, but that has not been much help.

Then, at 2:14 A.M. last night, as I crawled back into bed after a 10-minute stretch, filled with a self-centered sadness for my plight, I was struck with a sudden clarity of understanding about an event totally unrelated to my own pains.  My epiphany concerned the impasse unfolding in Nicaragua over the past twelve months and a new perspective on what I have regarded as  my own personal calamity.

For Nicaraguans the pains of death and detention have been intense and continuing; the grief of loss has been compounded by the surprise eruption following long-simmering pains within the civil body.  Even as Nicaraguans recognized the country’s issues, they felt, or hoped,  that eventual remedies would be peaceful and democratic.  But quite suddenly there was this great pain, this great stain, that fell upon Nicaraguan society.  It hurt.  Relief has been unattainable, no matter what position the ailing have taken.  And they wonder whether this is the new normal, the way that future society will function.

As painful as the losses are, it’s the uncertainty of the future that festers in the hearts of Nicaraguans today.  They know how they want to feel.  They know how they wish to live and move within society.  But the current uncertainty robs them of an essential component of well-being: hope.  Without faith in some actions or initiatives on which to focus, the future becomes an unknown, dark place.  This has been the day-to-day suffering of not just a retired yankee but of an entire Central American population.

That’s perspective.  The chances are pretty good that the discomfort that I have experienced for the past several weeks will go away; one way or the other, I’ll likely get over it.  For most North Americans, most of our daily aches are inconveniences at worst.  But 2:14 A.M. is a good time of the day to reflect upon the source of real pain….