article_snippet: To escape a mind on fire, where thoughts blaze and smoke like old possessions lost to arson.
article_snippet: ‘A single step — versus the pain of being alive.
article_snippet: At its worst you find yourself wishing, desperately, for any other affliction, and physical pain, because the mind is infinite, and its torments — when they happen
article_snippet: ‘then’ and the recovered (or perhaps I should say, recovering)
article_snippet: So when the old self asks for a reason to go on living, the new self replies:
article_snippet: it is quite therapeutic to know that pleasure doesn’t just help compensate for pain, that pleasure can actually grow out of that pleasure.
article_snippet: Now there is nothing at all original in the suggestion that pain does pass and that you can learn from it.