I read somewhere that the only thing that kept this particular person going when she cried through her first workout was knowing that the next one would be easier. It would only be easier, if she kept going. And then I started to think about pain. It is part of our package deal on earth to experience pain. When you're a kid, you hate how bitter medicine is and you can feel it on your tongue even before you touch a drop. If your caretaker is anything like my ahma, you'll take it anyway because you are promised a dollar if you take the medicine. If your caretaker is anything like my ahma, she owes you a lot of money. But the older folks always tell you that things that are good for your body don't always taste the best. When you grow up and sickness grows bigger, more dangerous, more life threatening, medicine evolves from a bitter drop to something more toxic. Poison. Knives. The trauma of post-surgery. When you're lying on the hospital bed unable to move and all you can experience and focus on is pain, you have to psych yourself into thinking that it will only get better. You have to. And then you embrace the pain knowing that something is working. When you go through chemo and you suffer the side effects, you begin to understand that pain means that something is getting destroyed, something is working for your good. So you embrace pain. And what about heartbreaks? You could be very happy living in the past, all comfortable and completely detached from the here and the now. But if you reject pain, you reject healing too, right? What about working hard? In school or at work? You could be in your comfort zone and give the least amount of effort, but then what? What do you gain? Nothing good comes easy. If it hurts, something is working. It will only get easier, if you keep trying. So if you feel like killing yourself today because the here and the now seems unbearable, know that as long as you are still hurting, progress is still at your fingertips. Help is always available if you reach out. Pain doesn't mark the end of whatever you are going through. It means that there is still something in store for you. If you keep trying. It will get easier. It will get better. Take it one day at a time, one hour at a time if you must. If you've survived the previous hour, you can survive the next. Keep this cycle and you will look back in time and see how far you've come. Pain is good. Sometimes.