The rules:
I draw a line in the sand, drop one or more pithy sayings on either side of it, and comment gleefully as they kick the crap out of each other. Last man standing is the winner, and I'm not above giving one of them a shove.
"Those things that hurt, instruct."
Ben Franklin
"The art of life is the art of avoiding pain."
- Thomas Jefferson
I trust that Gentle Reader will not be shocked if I support Tom on this one, with apologies to Franklin as well as Nietzsche.
Some pains teach, some setbacks prepare us for soldiering on, but the temptation to imbue every misfortune with redemptive meaning strikes me sometimes as a desperate grasping at straws, other times as naive hubris.
Everything does not, in fact, happen for a reason. Some pain just hurts, some grief just knocks you down and doesn't ever help you back up again. Accidents and diseases and tsunamis aren't lessons, they're just stuff that happens.
I suppose Jefferson is implying that the art is in figuring out which pains to endure and which to shun. In that respect his take is the truer one. Be careful out there.
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