"Normal is great"

Those of you in the UK may have seen the current slick ad campaign of the online bank More Than, which spotlights their insurance products.

Its tagline is "Normal is great", and I've had this in-mind this week as I've battled with an excruciating toothache. Well, two trips back to Cardiff later - no, I haven't registered with a London NHS dentist; we do live in the real world here, after all - I'm back to 'normal' and actually really happy as a result.

This reminds me of one of my favourite passages of Schopenhauer's 'On the Suffering of the World' where he describes suffering as being a noticeable, and therefore positive, event, which breaks with our 'normal' state of happiness. Suffering is the -1 to our natural state of 0, if you like, and this is why it's our lot in this world to remember the pangs of unhappiness more easily than a distant memory of happiness. I agree with this (and most other things I've read by him), but I must say in the short term after an uncomfortable event, the sense of relief and euphoria are wonderful.