Embrace the Pain

“The pain of the mind is worse than the pain of the body” Publilius Syrus (Roman author, 1st century B.C.)

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” M. Kathleen Casey (Canadian Speaker of the Legislative Assembly)

To fear pain indicates at the least a tendency to avoid pain. To welcome it is to welcome balance, not for promise of comparative lack of pain but the existence of pain in itself. “Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain” - William Faulkner (American Nobel Prize winner for Literature 1897-1962)

Strength is to strive for, not hardness for hardness can break while strength can understand and adjust yet stand steadfast. So pain should not be sought out, nor be a fixation of interest any more than the achievement of happyness for either are but by products and should be taken as such. “We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” Kenji Miyazawa (Japanese poet and author of children's literature 1896 - 1933)

In doing so, they will gain the appreciation, that is the embrace of their existence, as they deserve without needing the strength that are to be spent on tangible goals, whichever they may be. Pain doesn't need to be enjoyed, merely embraced. Strength and indeed contentment can be achieved by acknowledging the existing social stigma of fear from pain and greed for joy and adressing that by embracing both as they come as an enriching and equally essential limb of life. “Pain and death are part of life. To reject them is to reject life itself.” Havelock Ellis (British psychologist and author 1859-1939) "Life without pain is meaningless." Arthur Shopenhauer (German Philosopher, 1788-186)

To be aware of death is to respect life. However, the embracement of that awareness void of fear will ensue in the elimination of pain connected to said fear. There is no pain in death, so there is no need to imagine, and therefore search out pain in fearing what is not. "When we exist death is not, and when death exists we are not. All sensation and consciousness ends with death and therefore in death there is neither pleasure nor pain. The fear of death arises from the belief that in death there is awareness." Epicurus (Greek philosopher 341 BCE – 270 BCE)

The concious perception of pain alters the depth of it to levels of acceptance. “Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.” Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher, 1788-1860) That distinction is brought by the differentiation between the perception of inevitability and therefore acceptance and embracement and that of rejection. "He who has a why can endure any how.” Friedrich Nietzsche (German philosopher and classical philologist 1844 – 1900)

With a certain disposition toward pain and pleasure, namely that of embracing said reactions, one can influence suffering and happiness.

There are no facts, only interpretations.
Friedrich Nietzsche (German philosopher and classical philologist 1844 – 1900)