I knew I could do it. The solution came to me in a dream. Well, really it was more like a trance.  I was in line at the post office and the lady in front of me had such strong perfume on that I think it penetrated my brain and opened things up. (Perhaps you already know that odors bypass the complicated part of the brain that reasons things out. They go straight to the reptilian brain, the one that takes care of base survival needs, which used to be in charge of alerting us to the tiger in the bush. That’s why sometimes you walk down the street and get hit with an odor that immediately transports you back to your high school cafeteria and whatever traumatic events took place there, all without bothering your higher level thinking processes.) I told you last time that Ms. C. knows certain things. This is one of them.

Anyway, before I snapped out of my trance I saw the Truth: It was all about Pain. Everybody has it. Everybody fears it. Everybody wants to avoid it. Nobody knows what to do with it. I would just do for Pain what The Secret did for Positiveness. I will call the book  The Anti-Secret. And listen to this slogan: Don’t erase your pain. Embrace your pain.

When the trance passed, I was left with a stabbing headache, very fitting I thought. I nudged my thinking brain, my neocortex, to wake up and begin to embellish this rich idea. I would feature Pain, the taboo subject. It would be heroic. And sexy. And attention-grabbing.

I have a lot to work with too, as there are a great many types of pain. Off the top, I can think of psychic, physical, emotional, spiritual, phantom and referred. For good measure I’ll throw in the current hot topic of economic pain. Each one should be good for a chapter, and then I’ll be done. All I have to do is follow the formula. I’ll start with a stirring introduction of the concept: Pain is your friend and has much to teach you, and simply proceed step by step.

1. Discover Lost Truth. The party line: Pain can bring many losses but also unexpected gains in maturity and spiritual growth. Running away from it only delays the inevitable reckoning. It’s you against the pain. Who is going to win? You have many personal resources as well as the support of others to marshal against it. Pain joins you to the heroes of the past who have learned to overcome it: JFK and his back, Christopher Reeve and his battle against paralysis. The concept has been lost to us in the materialistic strivings our toxic culture encourages.
2. Identify the chosen few who know this truth. That would be me and a couple of girlfriends who I have generously shared it with because I am such a kind and enlightened person. I’ll call them Oprah and Gail.
3. I’ll need an enemy – people who are so dense and backward that they can’t see the truth.  So, I choose The Secret lady. Who better? She isn’t dense and backward at all – far from it. In fact, she is my mentor, but you have to remember to marginalize the people who don’t “get” it.
4. The result that I can promise seems a little thorny. I can’t really promise relief, because the pain won’t necessarily go away just because you face it. I could use enlightenment, but I want to be original. I’ve settled instead on full-out-360 degree-dish-it-out-I-can-take-it living; you know, the full-catastrophe living thing, like in Zorba the Greek.
5. I’m kind of up a creek though on the prosperity issue. How can I guarantee someone with physical pain (who probably has a pile of medical bills) or economic pain (whose investments just dried up) that they’ll achieve financial success?  I’m tempted to take actual money out of the equation and replace it with personal growth, but wouldn’t that dilute my message? I just have to try harder to believe in the formula and promise what my public wants to hear – that if they do what I say, riches will come their way.
6. To make things sufficiently simplistic I’ll just say it and say it again: Pain – accept it, embrace it by sheer force of will. That should appeal to the black and white thinkers. Check.
7. As for cause and effect, it should actually bear out that if you face your pain and grapple with it the natural outcome will be positive. In reality, it is much harder to deny and avoid than to face. But it worries me that staunchly refusing to acknowledge the pain may be exactly the thing that works for some people. I have to eradicate that gray-area thinking though if I am going to succeed. From the moment of reading the book, all good outcomes will be attributable to the Truth revealed there. Any difficulty will be blamed on failing to believe it sufficiently, of course.
8. And about media attention, I’ve noticed that the measly weasely politicians and pundits who are trying to get noticed rely on the debate model.  You just pick the biggest guy, disagree with him and pretty soon you are on the Sunday morning news shows seeming as important as he is. I could try the same thing. If I play my cards right, I could end up debating The Secret lady. I don’t think I’m right for Meet the Press, but maybe Good Morning America.
9. I’ve rounded up some historical figures and their quotes to back me up. Like for instance:       
• Pain pays the income of each precious thing.   –Shakespeare                                                 
• Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. –Helen Keller
• Who’s going to doubt them?
10. Next, merchandizing.  I’m hoping there is a goddess of pain. She would make a great visual. I’ll build a logo around her and slap it on all my products, which now could expand to a line of Embrace Your Pain heating pads and ice packs. So many product possiblities, my head is spinning.
11. This item, my last-minute addition on denial of pain, obviously has to go. That’s all right – eleven was an awkward number anyway.

So, in summary, what a relief to have finally figured this out. I won’t waste my time actually writing the thing yet. I’ll just work up a book proposal and send it to that list of New Age literary agents I put together. One of them is going to be one lucky soul.

See you on the Best seller list!