01. The Challenge

When our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.

02. The Solution

However, in certain situations, official duties and responsibilities must be fulfilled, even when they involve difficult decisions consequences. These obligations cannot be avoided, and individuals must act in accordance with their role and purpose. Therefore, one must uphold these responsibilities with integrity and wisdom, even when faced with challenges or discomfort. It is through such commitment that we maintain trust and accountability.

• One who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure.

• laborious physical exercise.

• One who avoids a pain that produces no resultant.

• Avoids pleasure itself, because it is.

03. The Result

Because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure.

But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself.