From experience and from general knowledge that we have these days, physical pain is much more preferable over emotional.

Emotional pain can wreck extreme havoc on your health, inadvertently causing physical pain whether it be in a form of a simple cold, muscle cramps, headaches, or cancer development. On the other hand, if your emotional state is happy and sound, any physical pain will heal that much faster and better.

Plus it's much better (in my opinion) to look back five years and say "Hey, yeah, that was when I broke my leg in 3 different places but man, that weekend was a blast! And hey, I can walk again!" rather than. "Oh yeah, it's the fifth anniversary of our divorce today... Heh...."

Well... I feel a bit out of place replying to this, seeing as I have never lost anyone close to me. However I can say that I have endured physical pain to the levels of losing consciousness from the pain, as well as chronic long term pain to the point where the doctor could not believe I hadn't gotten an injury seen to for over a year. And I just wasn't phased. That's not to say that I have a high pain tolerance, I don't really.

Anyways, something someone once told me applies. They said that when you remember happy times, you will often relive that happiness, when you remember sad times, you will relive that sadness. But physical pain is fleeting. When you remember it, you don't relive the pain.

I may not have lost anyone close to me, but I do believe this is true. Emotional feelings are far more lasting than physical feelings. I can say I would suffer my physical ailments all over again rather than lose my cat. Let alone a human being. Even a casual friend I would rather suffer my pains than see lost.

I used to have quite a bit of pain tolerance back in my school days, but leave it that I was teased viciously for misspelling "wheel" in the eighth grade spelling bee after making it all the way to districts the year before. Even at the end of the year, I asked for one of the guys responsible to sign my yearbook hoping that all was forgiven. It wasn't, and the scars still remain.

God, thinking about those years makes me want to e-stalk a tormentor of particular note so I can visit their house and beat the ever-living shit out of them. I realize that would mean I'm no better, but I still want to fucking do it.

Summarized:
Pain sucks but is good. Physical < Emotional < Spirital. Pain teaches, even if it does hurt. Broken bones and skinned knees over other pain any day.

I've had a hard time making a post for this forum. On this, it's difficult for me to put down my ideas, as I have so very many, and some are very conflicting. It took me a while to write this post actually, and I erased it entirely several times.

I would not say that when it comes to pain, I am an expert, or there is no more experienced person out there. I would never say that, because it's a lie. Any genocide survivor is far more experienced than I could ever be, as well as any elderly person out there. They live with pain, physical and emotional, daily. I even believe there's a third kind of pain, spiritual pain, that's even worse. More insiduous and far reaching at least. But mostly it's hard for me to talk about pain because I enjoy it and hate it at the same time.

No, not as a fetish, but as a reminder. I like pain, physical pain, as a reminder I am alive. I struggled for many years with depression. Sometimes I still do, though not so much anymore. At times I felt that I must be a ghost, or dead and not there, just an after image, and the pain helped remind me I was alive.

Though I never cut myself., I was accident prone enough that not having a bruise was more miraculous than anything else. At my first job, my clumsiness was a joke. I had my own first aid kit even. I tended to cheerfully doctor myself and move on, as it was never anything too serious. Sprains and strains I'm used to also, along with bruised bones, and cracked bones. I've only had a broken arm once, but that really only slowed me down that day.

So for me, barring extreme circumstances, physical pain is a welcome reminder I'm alive. I don't seek it out, as I like my blood and bits in me, but when it happens I don't cry or whine or complain. Except for my arthritis, and even then, only when it's bad enough I can't physically move the arm from the pain of the joint do I complain. Mostly because I can never find the aspirin.

Emotional pain is hard too. I know grief. I've lost two people in my life, one close, and the other even closer. My best friend was killed by a coal truck when I was seven. An honest accident on a mountain road. No one was looking and everyone there was equally at fault, but it cost my best friend her life. That's when my emotional pain began, and it was worse after my parents divorce. Any kid who's been through divorce tends to have a period of believing it was their fault, and I was no different. Then my mom died, as well. That's probably why it's hard for my to write this.

Because of that, I would say emotional pain is horrible and in all ways trumps physical pain. Physical pain is temporary for the most part, or can be subdued or even gotten used to. Some people even have a naturally high physical pain barrier. But emotional pain can linger for years and years and years. Sometimes it can even be buried so quickly and instinctively, behind an always smling face, that it festers even.

Spiritual pain corrodes a person though. Betrayals and great losses cause this. It's a combination of mental and emotional pain that effects the very core of a person, and rarely in a good way.

All of it though, you grow from, change from, and most of it you can become a better person from. At times it's hard to see how, or why, but pain teaches always. It may not teach good things. It may not teach bad things. But it always teaches something. So pain is good for that. You grow from it.

And besides, when you're as hardheaded as I am, how else are you supposed to learn not to brake on your bike while going downhill. A good thumping on the ground teaches you real fast. Though I did miss denting that dudes car.