Listener question: I have a question, on behalf of my wife.  She suffers from severe chronic pain. I would like to read her some of your writing, probably starting with SANE.  However, to her, the idea that she should look on these intolerable conditions or circumstances as just part of the content of life, or as something to be accepted as just part of the Present, is insulting and like a slap in the face.  It is hard, maybe impossible, for her to NOT believe in the reality of the constant pain with which she has to live.  To her, if the universe is 'Life' and she and the pain are part of that Life, then the universe sucks and Life is not much more than cruelty and misery and a horrible joke.

What do you tell someone who lives with such conditions?  Do you have any ideas for how I might be able to help her cope in the Present?