Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses
your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its
heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the
daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem
less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart,
even as you have always accepted the seasons that
pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the
winters of your grief.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within
you heals your sick self.
Your opinion of winter might change dramatically based on your mood; we might choose to focus on the cold and the dark of the winter, or we might just as well focus on the tranquil bursting of snow falling on snow. And as the peoples of the Arctic circle know, snow is, in fact, insulating. 
 
 There are odd parallels between grief and serenity, and it’s often in our moments of mourning, when our soul feels tormented, that our life is at its most static, its most quiet. They say that once you resign yourself to the water in your lungs, that drowning is a peaceful death. Whether or not this is true, it is useful as a metaphor: when we resign ourselves to grief, and  allow  ourselves to “drown” in it, that’s how we’re able to pass  through  it. 
 
 Henry Miller  put it another way: 
 Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos. 
 Note that winter is the agricultural season in which no fruit is borne or harvested.
On Pain