Pleasure can’t cure pain.
This is because the two are on completely different spectrums. Biologically, our responses to pain and pleasure are in the same area of our brain, but emotionally, they operate on two different sides.
In turn, we can’t choose which emotion we are more responsive to while not experiencing a different emotion to the same degree.
Have you ever heard the phrase, “if you didn’t have rainy days, you wouldn’t be able to appreciate the sunny ones?” Well, the truth is if you didn’t have rainy days, the sunny days simply wouldn’t exist. This is because of duality.
We exist in duality; our hearts and lungs function because of duality. They function because they have an opposite and equal half. The same is true in life.
There is no good without evil, no pleasure without pain.
The issue has never been the presence of pain, but the inability to see its purpose.
We associate happiness with all things good, which is the root of our problems, and why we ultimately believe we aren’t happy.
The reality is that feeling ‘good’ all the time is unreasonable. Happy people aren’t people who feel good all the time; they are people who can process their negative emotions rather than being paralyzed by them.
Happiness is all about asking yourself not “how good you feel,” but why you feel it.
Our pain is helpful to us; it serves us, teaches us an important lesson.
We often find ourselves in the state of suffering after experiencing pain because we don’t listen to it, so our pain thrives.
Imagine what happens when you place your hand on a burning stove. You feel pain because your body signals you to move your hand. Emotionally, things aren’t much different.
We see pain as being in opposition to our happiness rather than a key component in creating it.
To fix this, we must first understand there is no avoiding pain. Next, we need to stop chasing happiness, stop chasing the high that we think will come when we get that promotion, and feel the peace we are in.
Once you detach from the outcomes, you can enjoy what life brings you each day, learn from your pain, and turn it into happiness.
