Pain and Joy

I have often thought that when one avoids pain, joy is avoided as well. Almost as if they were two sides of the same coin. How can you truly experience joy unless you have experienced pain? I don't see how the two can be divided.

When you do everything you can to numb yourself to pain, there is no other option than to numb yourself to the good things in life also. The problem is that numb-ers don't see what they are missing because they have lost sensation.

It is a paradox, joy equals pain and pain equals joy.