When I go running some place unfamiliar, I take my watch. It helps me know how far I've gone. Otherwise, the pain in my bones, the fatigue in my legs, or my gasping breath on a hill might deceive me into thinking I can't do (or can do) something I really can. Pain or discomfort -- a deceiver. I haven't really thought of it like that before. I need something like a watch to help me properly interpret what I experience, to have a more true understanding of it, rather than just going with what it feels like where I am.
Both are realities, but one could overshadow the other.
Ann Voskamp puts it this way:
Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don't numb themselves to really living.
and
this Daily discipline is the door to full freedeom.
A watch to keep me oriented to what is true...to make me free.
