One psychoanalyst often made the same comment to his client. When a client described his defensive behavior, the psychoanalyst would say, “You're just afraid of pain.” Subsequently, the client said that these simple words, spoken repeatedly with a warm intonation in which the man felt acceptance and understanding, turned out to be very important for him. “Gradually,” he says, “I began to separate suffering and pain. I realized that these are not the same thing. In the later stages of therapy, I began to make more frequent choices in favor of the risk of pain, pain stopped scaring me so much, and that’s when the suffering in my life receded.” Let’s look at words similar to the word “suffering”: suffering, suffering (arable) land, suffering (a special type of love ditty). Note that we are talking about something passive: the earth is a passive object of actions performed on it. In the Proto-Slavic language, according to Vasmer, the word “suffer” is used in the sense of “to achieve, to care,” together with the object for which they suffer: “to suffer for the world.” That is, the original meaning of the word “suffering” is similar to the word “sacrifice” - to sacrifice for something or for something, to endure. Particularly indicative, of course, is the term “passive voice”: a form of voice showing that the person or thing acting as the subject in a sentence does not perform an action (are not its subject), but experience someone else’s action (are its object ). It becomes clear that suffering is possible only when a person feels like a victim of violence committed against him - from other people, feelings, life circumstances. Pain is completely different; it can be the result of one’s own choice. The film "Silence" begins with a torture scene: the Japanese pour boiling water from a hot spring over crucified Christian missionaries. This scene is true: it is known that Christian ascetics often went through such trials themselves and considered it an honor to endure them. One woman talks about her experience of childbirth: “I lay in the delivery room, endured contractions and was silent. Everyone around was screaming, some were swearing. I didn’t understand why I should scream, although I was in a lot of pain. I knew that I really wanted this child and that I myself chose to give birth to him, so what is the use of screaming, what and to whom should I complain about it?” So it turns out that the voluntary choice to go towards risk and possible pain eliminates suffering. “I was abandoned so often,” says one psychoanalyst client, “that I began to avoid relationships. A period of stagnation began in my personal life. But at some point I realized that by avoiding pain, I was avoiding life itself. I decided to go into a relationship, even if it threatens me with pain. Life has become rich and interesting. Some relationships still ended quickly, but I learned to let go and experience the pain of separation and rejection more easily. And that’s when I became capable of more permanent and intimate relationships. I realized that before that, I myself provoked breakups in relationships, because I was afraid to get attached and experience, if the relationship were destroyed, such enormous pain that would simply destroy me.” So it turns out that pain relieves suffering. Here readers may ask: and not Were those Christians masochists? Isn't the behavior that the people described here have chosen for themselves masochistic? I answer: no. Masochism comes precisely from the fear of pain. Masochists inflict pain on themselves only because they want to finally get rid of the fear of pain, and they do it compulsively, forcedly, that is, they suffer. In the lives of those who do not want pain, but are ready for it, the amount of pain paradoxically decreases.