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It is only the circumstances enveloping pain which give it meaning by provoking a greater or lesser degree of suffering. In the context of an illness, an accident or a persistent pain, the experience is endured and is almost always a mutilation. The individual is diminished and reduced to a shadow of themselves. By contrast, a pain which is chosen and controlled through personal discipline with the goal of pushing oneself to one’s limits (sport, body art, suspensions, getting a tattoo or a piercing, etc.) contains only a trifling element of suffering, even if it hurts. One merely has to accept a bearable level of discomfort. And the paradox is that, on occasion, recourse to pain is a means of combating suffering, as in the case of teenagers who self-harm.