ALAN WATTS

Understandably, pain, pleasure, and loneliness can make us unhappy, and pleasures can provide us with momentary happiness.

A certain dissatisfaction, want and frustration, is, strangely enough, providing a background towards being happy. Fulfillment of all desires, and having not...

• Some people find pleasure in watching something painful, finding that the pleasure is outweighing the pain.
• Others can feel a sort of catharsis, a liberation from their negative emotions, with the pain of others facilitating a kind of relief from their own traumas.
• Many fi...

In order to really enjoy the pleasures of life, we need to face the painful parts, too.

Pain and pleasure take turns: constant pleasure is a stimulus that must either lose strength or grow. And this growth will either harden the sense buds with its friction, or turn into pa...