The reality of life: taste suffering and joy in equal measure. That’s life, true life. Pain tends to make us aware of others’ problems and hence one tends to move closer to being compassionate and loving towards all other living beings. Thomas Hardy in his “The Soul of Man under Socialism” says it was necessary that pain be put forward as a mode of self realization. Pain is the route to perfection

Men through the ages have strived to do away with poverty and suffering. Their desire to get rid of pain and suffering have led them to a greater realisation that expresses itself through joy. And one emerges larger, fuller, lovelier, and more humane.

Pain is not the ultimate mode of perfection; it is merely provisional and a protest. It has a reference to wrong, unhealthy, unjust surroundings. And when the wrong, the unjust or disease is removed, pain will have no further place. Pain is the second face of joy. When pain goes, joy too exists. Under such conditions, man is left with simply life that is to be lived intensely, fully, and perfectly.