The Etymology of Pain
for the greater glory of god
cw: physical self-harm; disordered eating
The words disciple and discipline wound up in the same paragraph of a journal entry I was working on recently, and the similarity in letters stood out to me. I stared at the words and in my recovering Catholic core, I knew that there was something – something probably awful – to discover in their relationship.
The faith that raised me taught me to associate pain with goodness, suffering with reward, and meekness with blessings. Even joy was not a good Catholic person’s possession; it was something to give back to God, from whence it came. Suffering, though? That’s yours to keep, babe! It’s only because you deserve it, though. And don’t you forget it. Amen.
My study began with the word disciple, not to be confused with the word apostle. There were 12 apostles, and those fellas were selected by Jesus to spread his teachings and to join him for the Last Supper. But there are numerous disciples of Jesus Christ – even today, a follower of Jesus’ teachings can rightfully call themselves a disciple since the word means “student,'' or “learner,” essentially. In latin: Discere, discipulus, discipul, deciple. Tomato, tomato.
However, when I think of the word discipline, I do not think of learning. I do not think of Jesus. I think of running faster, adding an extra thirty minutes to a workout, skipping a meal, saying no to another glass of wine, or hitting “stop” instead of “snooze” on the alarm.
“That’s learning, though,” I thought. “Isn’t it? Learning by doing. By practice.”
And, surely enough, the word discipline translates to a sort of training by punishment. Put gently, from our Middle English ancestors, the word means “mortification by scourging oneself.” Self-flagellation.
Ah, there it is. The connection.
***
I first heard of intermittent-fasting from my Aunt, maybe three or four years ago.
“Jacob,” she leaned in closer to me with her eyes on mine, like she was delivering someone else’s secret to me, “you have to try it.”
“Your window,” she explained to me, “refers to the hours of the day during which you can eat whatever you want, and as much as you want. Start with a big window, like 2:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., so that you’re only fasting for 15 hours, and then gradually make your window smaller, so that you end up fasting for 17 or 18 hours. Black coffee and water are all you’re allowed to have when you’re outside of your window.”
“So you skip breakfast and eat, what? A late lunch? Aren’t there calories in coffee?”
“When you’re hungry,” she plowed through my questions, “your body will naturally start to rely more on its fat supply. It burns up. You lose weight. You train your body to crave less. It takes discipline, but it works.”
I don’t think I’ve ever been above the 15th percentile for either weight or height.
Still, though, to this day, by habit, I seldom bring a parcel of food to my mouth before 3:00 pm.
***
My English degree speaks for itself, but one thing I remember of A.P. Biology is that, when you finish sprinting and are panting for breath, it’s called lactic acid fermentation.
That’s my goal every time I lace up my sneakers. I want to not be able to breathe. I want the inhalation of air to physically hurt my throat. I hit the one-mile-left marker and think, “Only faster from here on out. Why slow down? Who does slowing down help? This is when you get stronger” as if my legs weren’t on fire, as if I weren't dizzy and dehydrated in the midday sun, as if I hadn’t already been running for seven miles.
***
Once, I got sick after a weekend of drinking and making out with strangers. Strep throat. I had a miserable week. And the entire time, I thought, “this is my penance.” I thought, “I deserve this sickness, this fatigue, this pain, this discomfort.”
My therapist was baffled: “Why?” she asked.
“Why what?”
“Why do you deserve strep throat? Or pain, in any sense? Or discomfort?”
I had no answer.
“Is it…” she continued, tepidly, “because you had a fun weekend? Because you left shame at home and danced in the dark and felt beautiful and free?”
“Yes.”
***
At my all-boys high school, we had to go to confession twice a year: Once before Christmas and again, before Easter. Our dirty high school souls had to be clean for Jesus’ big days.
The priests of the school would each pull two chairs into the four far corners of the second-floor chapel. One theology class at a time would quietly scatter in the middle pews and, one student at a time, we’d drag our feet to sit with one of the priests and confess our sins.
The lights in the chapel were off. Sunlight filtered in through the 12-feet stained glass windows. Calming piano music played loudly from a boom-box (with a plug and a CD-rom!) in the middle of the room to help muffle the students’ quiet asks of forgiveness for being mean to parents, for cheating on geometry and chemistry tests, for masturbating, for masturbating, for masturbating.
When we left the chapel, we’d compare penances as a means to discover who among us was the worst. Turns out, though, two rosaries were the ticket to salvation for all of us.
“Huh,” one boy said, “that’s it? Guess I could afford to sin more.” He grinned at his own added emphasis. We all laughed, thinking about porn not even an hour after we had just said we were sorry for watching it.
***
The most recent time I saw my doctor, she pursed her lips at my chart when she walked into the room.
“Oh god,” I thought, “my liver enzymes are finally betraying me.”
But instead, looking up to meet my eye gaze, she said, “You’re really at the lowest weight I’ll ever be comfortable seeing you at.”
I didn’t respond.
She sat down in the rolling chair without a back that seems to be ubiquitous in every primary care physician’s office. “Tell me about your eating habits.”
I told her what I knew would be safe for her to hear: I don’t buy junk food or chips. I walk my dog four miles a day and coach fitness for a living. “I don’t eat, like, a ton,” I told her, “but when I do, it’s usually beans, meats, eggs, protein powders, vegetables – that sort of thing.”
“Good,” she nodded, looking back down at the chart.
A beat.
She added, “So, I don’t need to be worried?”
“No,” I told her.
When I had to take deep breaths in-and-out with her cold stethoscope on my sunburnt chest, I thought I was going to faint. I hadn’t eaten all day.
From somewhere sick came a voice in my head – “Good job. You’re at your perfect weight.”
Blessed are the meek.
***
Sister Helen, one of the nuns who taught me until 8th grade, once said, “Stigmata is the holiest gift a person can receive. It makes you an automatic saint if God sends you the stigmata.”
Stigmata is, in Christianity, when a person bears physical wounds on their body that correspond to the wounds of Jesus’ crucifixion.
Holes in the hands, a pierced rib cage, a bleeding back – God’s greatest gift.
I prayed hard during this time in my life – mostly that I’d not like boys. In fact, I prayed so much, and with such fervency, that I thought, “What if I wake up with pierced feet one day? Then I’d be a saint! Not damned! Not gay! A saint!”
Researchers at UCLA in the last decade have found stigmata less of a religious miracle and more a phenomena of hysteria, dissociative personality disorder, anorexia, and self-mutilation.
What would Sr. Helen think?
***
Saint Pope John Paul II apologized for the Catholic church’s apathy during World War II. He said that marriage is between a man and a woman. He spoke out against communism and wasn’t entirely terrible to folks of other religions. For this reason, Catholics of the 90s and 2000s absolutely adored him. Many still do.
So, when it came out that JP II occasionally self-flagellated – knelt naked and whipped his own back – zealous, lay disciples of his began following suit in order to remind themselves that there are more important things than their own pleasure.
The church – and the Pope’s office – had to issue statements: Easy, there! Please don’t whip your own back without the supervision of a master spiritual advisor. You are not the Pope.
Blessed Mother Teresa (St. Mother Blessed Teresa?) was – and is – beloved amongst Catholics as well. She was fearless. Simple. Her prayers are digestible. Her reported miracles are impressive. She was so small, you’d think a gust of wind would knock her out, and yet the entire world knew of her and her goodness.
The entire world seems less aware that she wore a barbed-wire garter around her thigh – some reports say for two hours a day, others say at all times.
Behold, the Lord’s most devoted disciples. Behold, their discipline.
***
I went to a Jesuit high school and a Jesuit college.
The Jesuits are a sect of Catholic priests devoted to education in urban areas.
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, or, For the Greater Glory of God, or, AMDG, is the most commonly known motto of the Jesuits, next to magis, “the more.”
When I was 19-years-old, I got the letters AMDG tattooed on my left wrist during a time when I was blacking out four nights a week and bawling by myself in the back pew of a gigantic cathedral every Sunday afternoon.
No one warned me that having fun came at such a steep price. I felt far from my faith, from the suffering of my childhood.
***
Now, I manage a fitness studio. We offer 50-minute classes of low-impact strength training. It’s a killer workout. Your muscles shake. People report being sore for two or three days afterwards. It hurts. And it works.
There are words painted in white letters around the blue studio walls: Strong, Empowered, Committed, Community, Bold… “Disciplined” is not one of them.
I try to take two, 50-minute classes a day.
“You must have a lot of time on your hands,” someone said to me recently, coyly.
“You have time for what you make time for,” I responded.
They caught onto my tone. “Sorry. I can only imagine that level of discipline.”
***
On a recent run, I saw a group of men around my age playing volleyball. They all looked like the old Abercrombie models – tall, sun-kissed, nothing-but-muscle.
When I got home, I journaled, “I see what I’m supposed to look like, and I don’t know how else to get there.”
Is it discipline? Genetics? How could those volleyball players’ discipline be greater than mine?
I put my pen down and did 100 push-ups on my bedroom floor.
***
“They lack the discipline,” has often been the retaliatory comment to the countless men in my family who physically struggle to stop drinking once they start.
***
Everything about discipline sounds like it hurts.
***
In Broken Wings by Kahlil Gibran, there’s a sentence that reads, “And God said ‘Love Your Enemy,’ and I obeyed him and loved myself.”
What could take more discipline than this singular, vital work?
***
A man I enjoy spending time with laid behind me in bed recently and kissed my neck and shoulders as we listened to the birds sing outside my window, as we breathed in the scent of the coffee brewing drip by drip from down the hall.
He left and I cried – not because I missed him, but because it felt so good to do something so bad.
I hear my therapist hypothetically asking me, “What made it bad?”
And I see myself – hypothetically – not responding.
She says, “Because it felt good? Because you felt cherished and loved? Is that what made it ‘bad’?”
“Yes.” Yes.
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The word “discipline” has been on my mind a lot lately. I’ve particularly been meditating on the relationship between discipline and shame. In some ways, I don’t think discipline could live without it.
Bravo!
Haunting and historical and painfully relatable.