Pondering life and pain, a member writes with humor and perspective.

Sometimes there is no solution to a problem.  Chronic pain is like that. You don't get rid of it.  You just learn to live with it, doing the small things to make the day go by with some small reward of laughter. - Dr. T

Why continue living? Not that there is much choice in the matter.

• Is death the end of existence? No definitive answer. Speculation only.
• To be, or not to be? That is the question. What the hell is the answer?
• Death is not a win over life but an admission of defeat and the inability to cope with life.
• Achieving death can be a hell of a lot more difficult than living. As if life were not difficult enough.
• What comes after death may be a whole hell of a lot worse than what came before!
• Life has more fun options than death. Left to your own devices all you do is decompose after death.
• There is no guaranteed painless method of death!
• Does death guarantee an end to pain and suffering? No definitive answer. Speculation only.
• Quitting just leads more rapidly to grimmer, darker and more unpleasant ends.
• There is always someone else’s life that makes yours appear heavenly. Sure as hell does not make yours any better.
• Death is not any fairer than life. Just less imaginative and inventive.
• The living are never given the option of not existing. Too be, or not too be is not an available option.
• Life is just the crap that happens to the living. Completely different crap happens to the dead. There is a hell of a lot of crap between the living and the dead. Does it make good fertilizer? Good for flowers and food?
• Nothing better to do! No definitive answer. Speculation only.
• Too lacking in imagination, intelligence and resources to devise and implement a means of ending a singular personal existence. Must not forget too lazy.
• DAMNED if I know! Too difficult to stop?
• FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN! Knowledge will set you free? The wrong knowledge may accelerate and facilitate life’s end. Ignorance may just do it faster.
• When everything is done and said; there really is no choice in the matter. Just keep doing the best until the end?

All things considered why rush to make a personal discovery of what is on the other side of death? Not exactly the most compelling of reasons.
Thoughts on PAIN!
I have a rather too intense, intimate and enduring personal relationship with pain that continues to intensify. Pain is a unique experience as unique as the individual experiencing the pain. Pain is more than physical. It is emotional and psychological as well. Never belittle another person’s pain. Never consider your pain to be greater than anyone else’s. Invisible does not mean nonexistent. Pain only kills if it causes shock and death is due to shock left untreated. Pain that intensifies over time can seem to endure for eternity. The desire for the end of existence can result from acute chronic pain lasting decades and other major complications of life. As if there is life without complications. Death does not guarantee the end of pain and suffering.
Pain is part of the shit that happens to the living due to living. It is thought that the dead do not experience pain. Pain is the hard way to learn important life lessons. Pain is not something to be distributed, propagated, shared or spread.
Empathy is acceptable; sympathy is not.

I do believe that I have warned you upon several occasions that I have a twisted sense of humor.
-Anonymous A

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After being with hundreds of dying folks, my belief is that this human experience is the bottom rung of the ladder and that as spiritual beings it only gets better! We are spiritual beings having a human experience, not the other way around. 
​-Anonymous B​