The Mystic answer

I say that life is neither a curse nor a punishment,
But a rose filled with the beauty of desire.

The stem of the rose is your life upon this earth,
The thorns, painful lessons you bring unto
yourself, that you might learn.
The leaves are those joys that enter
your life with the tenderness of an unseen Love.

Curse not the sorrow of your thorns,
for the deeper they cut unto the heart of
your being, the greener the leaves of joy shall be.

Daniel Miller