SAT pain

Amelia is studying for the SATs this summer which, of course, means I am too.

The other day, her vocabulary words were all words having to do with softening pain: ameliorate, mitigate, pacify, assuage.

I asked her, "why do you think there are so many words for softening pain?"

"I have no idea," she said, looking rather pained herself.

"Maybe," I said, "there is a lot of pain in the world."

"Or, maybe," she said, looking right at me, "people just don't like to be in pain."

"True enough," I said. True enough.