For Buber, modern people lose themselves in the collective and numb the quiet ache that signals something is wrong in their relation to themselves. That pain is not an enemy; it is information. It carries the hidden desire to become a person again - a self capable of genuine I–Thou encounter rather than I–It transaction. Real education, Buber argued, begins not with lecturing people about eternal values but with refusing to anaesthetise this discomfort. Kept awake, pain becomes the starting point of conscience, honesty and change. The line challenges a culture of constant distraction: before reaching for the next numbing habit, stay with what hurts long enough to hear what it is asking of you.