Our attempts to avoid painful feelings and experiences, so often leave us not fulfilling our potential, not being involved in potentially meaningful relationships, and not fully living life. We also end up surrounding ourselves with the painful feelings anyway by imagining them and regretting lost opportunities. Is it not worth risking being hurt, worried, rejected, grieved but having the opportunity to be involved in something meaningful, than protecting oneself from such feelings but perhaps feeling a lack of meaning, connection, passion as a result? Sometimes people forget that the very nature of human existence means that life is hard, but some of the hardest things you will experience will bring the most learning and meaning to life.