Take an ordinary piece of paper. Fold it. Fold it again. Then one more time. Then sit back and observe the beautiful creation you have made.

Laurell Moffatt reflects on a life-long love of the Japanese paper art of origami.

In it she finds connections to her childhood fascinations and the blueprints for fascinating machines, from the microscopic to the orbital.

But with every fold a line of fracture is made. Damage. Stress. Fracture. Yet each exists for a purpose, for with each fold a flat piece of paper begins to take shape until it becomes what it is being folded to become. A frog, a crane, a swan. A face mask, a starshield, a microscopic surgeon. 

Point or no point, pain and suffering can be just as much a part of life as pleasure and joy. And if suffering in some form is part of what it means to be alive, whether we like that fact or not, it can help to know the reason for the suffering, or if that can’t be known, it helps to know that something good can come from pain.