Pain on par with love, hope and being alive

Out In The Open listener and author Ken Murray reached out to tell us how a childhood rowing coach helped him push through pain in sport and how that helped him deal with and realize the value of pain in life.

"To run away from pain is to lessen myself as a person," he says, "If I avoid pain I am weakening my abilities in the things I do, whether it's as athletes or as people in our relationships or in our work. And I'm just running from one of the basic aspects of being alive. It's as real as love and hope and sadness and curiosity."

Murray also reflects on pain in his debut novel, Eulogy.