Pain and pleasure cycles and how to overcome them

I remember during my childhood when one of my classmates and I were arguing about the particular line-type to be used to demarcate one country from another on an international political map. According to the legend, the line-type for state boundaries was a thin dot-dash line, and the line-type for national boundaries was a thick dot-dash line. My classmate had failed to notice the difference in thickness of one type from the other and argued this way:

The line type for state boundaries is a dot-dash line that begins with a dot, and that for national boundaries is one that begins with a dash.

I didn't know how to respond to this, but I remember even until now how funny it sounded when he explained it. But upon very recent introspection, I found that I could have been just as easily mistaken about his argument too. He might have been drawing them that way (one beginning with a dot and one with a dash) but may be I missed to notice the difference in thicknesses of his lines.

This misunderstanding has been very useful to me because it helped me understand how the human mind interprets repetitive cycles.

Let's come to the pain-pleasure cycles in life. It can not be argued that they are inevitable even though in your life they might be controlled to make a straight line without any ups and downs. Maybe you are a yogi. So, given that the most miserable person in the world, the happiest person in the world and a yogi have these cycles in their lives, we question, "What is it that differentiates one from another one of them?"

Here is my answer: The miserable person is on the dash of the cycle. The happy person is on the dot of the cycle. The yogi, because he is enlightened, separated himself from the cycle because he had understood long ago that the cycle is not a part of reality. The miserable person will next be on the dot and the happy person will next be on the dash. What changed? Just the moment of our observation. Note that our labels "miserable" and "happy" themselves are given based on where the person is on the cycle. The yogi realizes the circularity of this labeling method, and transcends the limitations of language. Thus he separates himself from the cycle and is at equilibrium with the world.