It is never fun to inflict pain on someone, even if you know it’s a consequence of doing the right thing.
It helps to remember that everyone is already in pain one way or another. Maybe your courage, honesty, and clarity will finally help them find the right kind – the root pain they can focus on to resolve a lot of other, secondary ills.
There are many flavors of hurt, and to keep growing, we need to swallow the right bitter pill at the right time. It’s not easy to be a doctor when you know the medicine tastes bad, but if we choose the potions we hand one another to the best of our ability, at least we can take comfort in having tried our best at treating the disease rather than the symptoms.