Pain

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
Much of your pa...in is self-chosen. --Kahlil Gibran

It is so easy to miss the daily miracles of your life, as you hurry to complete the goals you set for yourself, or those that someone else set for you. We seldom stop and smell the roses in our rush to get to our appointments. We rush to deal with what seems most urgent, forgetting about what is most important. Even watching TV in the evening often seems more important than listening to your family, or doing anything that requires thought (My opinion is that watching TV is the most significant and most prevalent time-waster there is for most people).

We spend most of our time wishing that we were more happy. Perhaps if the appointment goes well, or when I get my vacation, or when I find a new lover. We can't stand being sad or frustrated or disappointed, and we avoid it like the plague. We don't appreciate that without the bad times, we would never appreciate the good ones. Nor do we appreciate that because we are human, there will always be both good times and bad times, just as surely as winter is always followed by spring and fall is always followed by winter. We miss the lessons that the bad times are intended to teach us. All we think about is how to avoid them.

Much of our pain is self-chosen. For one thing, it is we who choose to see it as pain, instead of a lesson which is intended to benefit us and an opportunity to learn and grow into a better person. For another thing, we choose to see it as something that can and should be eradicated, instead of as a necessary part of our lives and one that makes us appreciate the good times so much more. Finally, we are so focused on the pain we have labeled as such and want to get rid of, that we fail to notice how wonderful life really is, and how everything that happens to us is actually good for us. If we see "bad" events as useful and necessary lessons for us and focus on all the wonderful things there still are in our lives, we will feel a lot less pain and a lot more happiness.