Pain is information

As a child, you touched something hot, and it burned you. That pain gave you a piece of information: be careful touching hot things. When you sign up to run a marathon, you are signing up for pain. But whether or not you keep running is up to you. It’s been said that “pain is inevitable but suffering is optional”. You can choose pain without choosing suffering. Pain is information, and information is painful. Rewiring your brain is not a frictionless process. Some knowledge can only be discovered the hard w