Our entire culture looks upon pain as an enemy, and teaches us to do anything, anything to get away from it. We're wrapped up in trying to evade pain, sometimes through numbing out with addiction, sometimes through an unwholesome obsession with avoiding pain altogether.
But most of us won't be able to avoid pain forever. At some point in our lives, perhaps when we are dying, there may be great pain — and actually, pain can be our greatest teacher, once we stop frantically fleeing its presence. We need to know what to do with pain: how to see it, how to work with it. And it really helps if we can use our experiences of pain right now to prepare us for what's ahead.
— Joan Halifax, Being with Dying