Recently I noticed an inconspicuous, faintly visible black spot in the palm of my friend’s hand. Upon enquiry, I learned that the spot was actually the tip of a sharpened pencil that had somehow broken off in her hand that she hadn’t bothered to remove. “Why didn’t you take it out?” I enquired, puzzled. “I tried to a few times, but I soon realized that I’d have to dig too deep and it would make my hand bleed, so I left it.” In my head, shedding a few drops of blood was an okay trade off, but for her the thought of pain outweighed the benefit of having a foreign-object-free hand.

Of course that got me thinking, ‘Isn’t that how we are as human beings?’ Unfortunately, the human dilemma is that we are often more satisfied with suffering the discomfort of an intruding thorn than bearing the pain of... (Continued)