Mmm. I think pain and joy are both teachers, but their lessons come in very different voices. Pain feels like a harsh tutor: unrelenting, often unwelcome. It forces you to slow down, to confront the cracks you might have hidden beneath your surface. Through pain, I've (not willingly) learned the fragile limits of my own strength, the weight of silence, and the delicate art of endurance. It is a teacher who doesn't sugarcoat truth but reveals it raw and unfiltered. Pain carves space for empathy, for understanding the quiet struggles others carry. Joy, on the other hand, is a softer teacher. Its lessons come wrapped in warmth and light, often subtle, easily overlooked. Joy teaches gratitude in its fleeting moments, the beauty of presence, and the expansive possibilities of hope. It reminds me that life, though fragile, is also filled with grace and connection even when it seems not to. If I must choose which teaches more, I might say pain leaves deeper marks, but joy leaves the gentler, enduring impressions... Both shaping who I am, balancing the weight of shadows with the pull of light. Sometimes, I wonder if the most profound lessons come not from choosing one over the other, but from learning to hold them both at once. Embracing the ache and the laughter as part of the same story. It's hard, though.