As an exercise in perceptual fluidity and flexibility, ponder the idea that the capacity for masochism is God’s gift to us in order to tolerate the intolerable. Sadism, likewise, is the gift of being able to inflict the intolerable, in pursuit of personal psychological and sometimes physical survival.
It is far from clear just what sort of universe we live in, or how it operates. Perhaps all of us, in the landscape of infinity, are vastly more powerful and resilient in all respects than we suspect.