Pain isn't fun. Trials aren't fun. Suffering... it is just not fun.

But life isn't easy... pain and suffering are parts of life. The important thing isn't necessarily avoiding pain. It is how we cope when the pain comes, and what we take away from the experience when the pain leaves.

Last year, I had a long stretch of intense back pain for over 5 months. I couldn't sleep through the night unless I took several different types of drugs, and even then it was no guarantee. Work was torture, simply sitting in a desk was uncomfortable. I couldn't focus, I couldn't enjoy the simple things in life, I couldn't even ride a mountain bike... the only thing I was worried about was getting rid of the pain.

Hopefully that kind of pain is behind me. And while I pray it is, I also pray that I continue to hold onto the things that I learned through that pain.

Here is a post I wrote last year about 6 of the things I was learning from back pain.

I highly recommend that you read it, so hopefully you won't have to go through the kind of pain I did to learn these lessons!

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"The best among men do not remember hostilities; they see the virtues, not the faults, and they do not stoop to enmity. It is the lowliest that hurl insults in a quarrel, Yudhisthira; the middling ones return the insults, but the best and the steady ones never babble about hostile insults, spoken or unspoken. The good only remember the good that was done, not the hostile deeds, acknowledging it because they have confidence in themselves." 

--Dhrtarastra in the Mahabharata

Many times, I feel like it is so ingrained in our nature to want to lash back at those who attack us. We may even have good reasons and good logic on our side, but as this quotation illustrates, that is still not the best course of action.

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I was recently reminded that everything in this world is fleeting. So many of the things that we take for granted and think will be there tomorrow and the next day and the day after that just might not be.