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.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy
Some truths are hard to accept, and this is one of them. How could my pain be self-chosen? Why would I have  chosen  to endure these things and this suffering? 
 
 But Kahlil, like many other philosophers, draws a line between the  events  that bring suffering into our life and our  reaction  to those events. 
 No one would ever choose to have things not work out the way they wanted or experience an event that introduced sorrow into their life. But you can control your  reaction  to those events, whether to let your pain define you, or to learn from it, and rise again. 
 Seattle rapper Macklemore put it this way: 
 I don’t control life, but I can control how I react to it 
 So Kahlil is saying, you need to realize that this pain is a  tool , not a prison. You need to let it educate you and follow it as you will, into escape.
On Pain