The Mercy of Knowing

Ambushed by the Memory of Pain

I heard a story in a pain clinic yesterday that struck me profoundly. Deeply. Affected my thinking in a way that shifted perspective. Gave me a window into someone else's world, that was vastly more challenging than my own, which, like yours, is not easy. Pain is part of my life. As it is most people. I wake up anticipating it. I cannot imagine waking to that pain every day, without being prepared for it.

Morning Clarity: Pain, Memory, and the Mind of a Strategist

In the quiet edge between night and dawn, a strategist does his most powerful work, not with charts or models, but with the raw truth of what it means to endure. This morning, a man both haunted and hardened by chronic pain, sat in silence, not to escape it, but to understand it. And what came wasn’t just relief or reflection... it was a revelation. Not about pain, but about the power of knowing.

His letter to Seneca, written as light stretched across his desk, didn’t ask for comfort. It issued no complaint. It was a report from the front line of daily suffering, offered with the same discipline and clarity that governs any high-stakes boardroom decision. And in that letter, he said what few dare admit: memory is not just a burden, it’s a shield. Anticipation is not just dread, it’s a discipline. And the repetition of pain is not always a curse. Sometimes, it’s a form of control.

What struck him was this: the idea that someone could wake into that same physical torment, but with no memory. No anticipation. No armour. Just raw, new agony every single day. That thought, more than the pain itself, humbled him. It reframed his suffering. Because while his pain was total, it was not novel. And in that familiarity, he found something rare, an edge.

Pain that returns is still pain. But pain that surprises, that ambushes the body like a knife from the dark, that is a different beast entirely. And he saw, in that moment, that his strategic mind, honed by decades of battle in business, had built a structure even around his suffering. Not to eliminate it, but to face it squarely, every day, without flinching.

That’s the strategy hidden in the letter. Not a playbook for relief, but for readiness. Not a prayer for pity, but a blueprint for presence. The man who meets pain with memory holds a weapon that those struck unaware do not. And that weapon is preparation.

This is what separates survivors from strategists: the ability to find pattern in pain, and then build a framework on top of it. To not only endure the blow, but to schedule its arrival, and greet it with poise.

His letter wasn’t just a message to a friend. It was a doctrine. Written in the language of a man who’s learned to turn even agony into a system. Who understands that the true enemy is not pain, but surprise. That chaos comes not from hardship, but from being unready. And that, above all, clarity is not comfort... it’s command.

His insight now stands as a lens for all who lead. If you’re bracing each day for what you’ve already survived, you’re not losing. You’re leading. And if you know your pain—and it no longer surprises you—then you have already won something most never do.

His next move? He doesn't wait for the pain to pass. He structures around it. He builds systems that can withstand it. He scales not in spite of it, but because he sees the edge it has sharpened within him.

This is the lesson: Whatever haunts you, whatever hurts, you don’t have to erase it. You have to make it predictable. Then you have to build. On schedule. With poise.

Now you move. What pain have you mistaken for punishment, when it’s actually preparation?

Let’s strip it down and build your system. Tell me what you’re facing.

Dear Seneca,

I write to you in the quiet dawn, hoping this letter finds you well. I imagine you reading these pages in your morning calm, perhaps with a cup of tea in hand, the steam mingling with the early light. It comforts me to picture that familiar ritual of yours as I begin another letter. We have exchanged thoughts for so many years that I almost feel your presence as I write, a patient, wise friend listening in the hush before daybreak.

This morning, as I slowly woke, I experienced a small moment of clarity that I felt compelled to share with you. You know that for many years I have lived with unrelenting physical pain. Each day, before I even move from my bed, I know pain is coming. It has become a ritual of the mind: I open my eyes and immediately brace myself, preparing to greet the now-familiar ache that resides in my body. In that fragile moment between sleep and full waking, I gather my fortitude about me like a cloak, anticipating the first stab of discomfort when I shift my limbs. This has been my dawn routine for as long as memory serves, a quiet, wordless preparation for the inevitable. It's not done in fear so much as in acceptance: a practiced steeling of the spirit before the day’s trials begin.

Yet today a thought visited me with unusual lucidity. As I lay there gathering the shards of my courage, it struck me how unimaginable it would be to wake each day into this same pain without the foreknowledge I rely on. I tried, for a moment, to envision what it would be like to open my eyes one morning with no memory of yesterday’s torment and no anticipation of today’s, to be unaware of the beast waiting in my nerves until it suddenly pounced anew. The very thought sent a chill through me. What a shock to the soul that would be, to meet such severe pain each day as if for the first time, unbraced and unsuspecting! I realized in that moment that I cannot truly fathom it. Despite all my experience of pain, I cannot imagine facing it completely fresh every sunrise, as one without memory might. The concept humbled me, as if I had glimpsed a deeper layer of suffering beyond my own, a trial I am, in fact, spared.

I found myself reflecting on why this scenario felt so overwhelming to consider. After all, memory of pain is its own burden, and anticipation can be a thief of peace. You and I have often discussed how the mind amplifies suffering: how we humans are “tormented alike by what is past and what is to come,” whereas a wild creature flees a present danger and, once safe, does not dwell on it again. I recall one of your earlier letters in which you noted that memory can resurrect the agonies of fear, and foresight can bring them early, so that we humans rarely confine our unhappiness to the present moment. How true that is. In my life with chronic pain, I have known the truth of it intimately: in the quiet night I sometimes re-live the hurt of the day now gone, and in the morning I pre-live the hurt I expect will come. It’s as if pain casts two shadows, one backward onto yesterday, and one forward onto tomorrow. These shadows have often weighed on me as heavily as the pain itself.

And yet – here is the gentle shift in perspective that dawned on me – those very shadows also protect me in their own way. The memory of yesterday’s suffering, though bitter, prepares my mind; the anticipation of pain, though it brings a tremor of dread, also arms me with resolve. Because I remember, I am not bewildered when the ache returns. Because I expect it, I meet it consciously, with my teeth set and spirit steeled. In a strange twist, the imagination of pain before it arrives means I suffer it twice, as the old saying goes, but that first, imagined suffering serves as a kind of rehearsal, softening the impact of the real blow. By bracing myself, I take a measure of control over the uncontrollable. There is a small solace in this: my pain is cruel, but at least it's not an ambush. I know its face; I have encountered it a thousand times. There is a grim familiarity that makes it almost… bearable, or at least endurable.

Contemplating the alternative – to be struck each day as if new, with no memory that it happened before and no expectation that it will happen again – I realized how unbearable that might be. I imagine it would be like a groundhog day of anguish, with each morning’s pain shockingly new, one’s mind innocent and unguarded every time. How could a person withstand such repeated astonishment of pain? Perhaps the first day they would manage, as any of us do when calamity initially strikes, drawing on emergency reserves of courage. But then to have that courage wiped clean by sleep, and to need to muster it all over again from nothing each dawn, it would be a merciless existence, far more harrowing than mine. In truth, I suspect I would quail before such an ordeal. And so, paradoxically, I found myself grateful for my memory of pain. What I once viewed only as a curse – the inability to forget my suffering – I now also see as a strange kind of blessing. It means I know my pain, and knowing it, I can meet it on more familiar terms.

This realization has settled in me without bitterness. I do not write these words to complain of my lot; you know I laid aside bitterness long ago, learning as we have from our beloved Stoic thinkers that resentment only doubles the burden. Rather, I write with a calm and lucid mind, observing my experience as if from a slight distance. In this moment of clarity, I simply see what is, without embellishment: that my daily bracing for pain, which once felt like a theft of joy (stealing the day’s peace before pain even arrived), is also a gift of preparation. There is a kind of balance in it. Yes, I awaken each day with a knot of dread in my stomach – but that very dread is the mind’s way of saying “I acknowledge this reality, and I am ready as I can be.” There is no panic in it now, only acknowledgment. In a way, it is a practice of acceptance each morning, a preemptive embrace of what will be. When the pain does come, I can almost nod to it like an old acquaintance: Ah, there you are; I was expecting you. This removes the element of surprise, which is a small mercy.

I find a gentle insight growing from this: that our minds, even in suffering, seek equilibrium. What imagination and memory take from us in carefree ease, they give back in resilience. They may deny us the forgetful peace that someone without pain might enjoy each morning, but they repay by ensuring that we are not destroyed by the newness of pain each day. I understand now in a deeper way something we have pondered before, the idea that one can endure almost anything if it becomes familiar. Human beings can get used to astonishing hardships. We acclimate; we find ways to incorporate the unbearable into the tapestry of life until it is somehow woven in and no longer a constantly raw wound. This adaptation, I realize, is partly thanks to memory and anticipation. They weave tomorrow’s thread with knowledge of yesterday’s, so that the pain is connected through time, continuous and known, instead of erupting as isolated, disjointed disasters each day.

Of course, I still strive (as ever) for the Stoic ideal of presence – not to suffer my pain before it arrives, as much as I can help it. I remind myself (often with your voice in my mind) that the present moment is all I truly own, and that to surrender it to the fear of future pain is to let pain win twice. I continue to practice this: breathing in the morning light, recalling that in this very second, lying still in bed, I might feel only a dull ache and nothing more yet. In those breaths, I find room for gratitude, for the warm blanket, for the chirp of a bird outside, for another chance at daybreak. I do not want to paint an overly grim picture, as if my every waking thought is dominated by distress. There is also a quiet joy in my mornings, a defiant spark of life that pain cannot extinguish. I have trained myself to notice the subtle comforts even while bracing for the discomfort. In that sense, perhaps I have learned a measure of the tranquility we so often speak of. Pain is my unwelcome companion, but it does not define the entirety of my day or my soul. It is one part of my morning routine, alongside checking the weather through the window, making my coffee, and now writing to you. I take what control I can: I cannot banish the pain, but I can choose to greet it on my terms, with a prepared mind, and an open heart.

I share all this with you, dear friend, in the same spirit that has sustained our correspondence all these years – a spirit of honest inquiry and mutual respect for the truth of lived experience. You have always been a patient recipient of my reflections, and I imagine as you read this, you might be nodding slightly, perhaps thinking of some apt line from our favourite philosophers, or from your own well of wisdom. I wonder what your thoughts are on this peculiar paradox I’ve described. It wouldn’t surprise me if you have considered something similar in your own meditations. After all, we have often explored together the themes of suffering, endurance, and the workings of the mind. This is but another facet of that endless conversation. In a way, I can hear your response already in my mind’s ear, not literally, of course, but I have a sense of how you might smile gently at this turning of an old idea. Perhaps you would remind me (as you have before) that nature equips us to bear our burdens in surprisingly ingenious ways. Or that courage is born from meeting our fate clear-eyed, not from avoiding the thought of it. These are lessons you have impressed upon me in the past, and here I am, discovering them anew through the lens of my own pain.

As I conclude this letter, the sun has fully risen, spilling gold across my desk. The day ahead will have its suffering – that I know – but also, I hope, its share of contentment in small measures. I feel oddly at peace as I finish writing. The very act of putting this insight into words for you has been clarifying. It is as if by articulating it, I have integrated it more firmly into my being. I will carry this clarity with me today as I go about my modest tasks. Whenever the familiar stab in muscle and tendon, or lightning in my nerves demands my attention, I will remember that I knew it was coming, and in that knowledge there is strength. And if a moment ever comes when I am tempted to curse the endless repetition of pain, I will try instead to be thankful that my mind, at least, is not forced to face unknown terrors each time, only the known one it has weathered many times before. In this way, I find the edge of bitterness is blunted, and what remains is simply life – my life – which I continue to find worth living and examining, pain and all.

Thank you, as ever, for reading my reflections. Across the years and distance, I feel our quiet connection in these pages. Be well, my friend. May your own days dawn with gentle promise, and if any suffering visits you, may your wise soul meet it as bravely and gracefully as you have taught me to do.

Sincerely,
Ben