Every so often you get burned. You get too confident, and life, nature, the negative, whatever you want to call it, has to bring you back down, and not necessarily gently. At least that's the way it works for me, a seemingly stereotypically idealistic Pisces. But it shows you that pain, whether physical, emotional or spiritual, is a necessary, inextricable part of life. You could call it the force of emotional gravity. In fact, paradoxically, it's necessary for human happiness or flourishing. Because it is merely an indication that the world is bigger than we are, that we can't stretch our minds completely around the cosmos. Would you really have it any other way?

Homer was wrong in saying: "Would that strife might perish from among gods and men!" He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe; for, if his prayer were heard, all things would pass away.... —Heraclitus, fragment #43.