I see pain and suffering as the necessary tools for carving out meaning in our own lives.
In related comment, the trend of medical professionals (let's be honest, it's politicians and lawmakers primarily driving it) to ignore and turn their backs on chronic pain patients is comparable in my opinion to allowing torture to continue. Internal wounds are just as real as external wounds, but humans typically only acknowledge in others what is visible. We pity the man with no legs, but we disregard the man with paralyzing and crippling pain.
I would argue that chronic pain is an evolutionary "bug", similarly to eczema, psoriasis, peanut allergies, and chronic depression. Most people can probably understand the notion that there are plenty of minor genetic issues that we all are affected with. I have a friend who has a sensitive stomach, she routinely feels sick and vomits. People understand that we all have unique genetics, but they somehow have a hard time understanding that we all have unique brains and nervous systems. I think the current political climate might be partially to blame: it's almost taboo to suggest that our brains are, in fact, unique, that we don't all experience the world the same way, in large part because of our genetics.
Biology is quite fragile. Humans have about 20,000 genes. Each one of these genes exists in multiple variants in the human population. You are a random combination of subsets of your parent's genes. We've evolved in such a way that most combinations of genes work reasonably well together. However, it shouldn't be so surprising that some random combinations of genes do not, in fact, work well together, and give rise to "genetic bugs". It shouldn't be so hard to conceive that it's possible that some people are made in such a way that they are more sensitive to pain than others. Maybe the regions of their brains that handle pain are hyperactive, maybe it's something in their nerves, maybe it's their pain sensors that fire too much. We don't have the medical technology to really assess these things, but that doesn't mean they can't exist.
We can only hope (and work towards) that will change. Of all the things I've read in the last year, Andy Clark's "Surfing Uncertainty" [0] has most changed my view on the experience of being.
You can read a synopsis at the link, but my quick take is that its core premise is that based on the totality of our life experience, our brain creates models of the world and our interactions with it. Our everyday experience of the world is then the interaction between what our brain predicts will happen from the model, error corrected via our sensory input.
So yes, everyone is unique and experiences the world differently. Where this is relevant to pain is realising how much of pain is in our head (so to speak). I started thinking about this originally when I was trying to work out why I would voluntarily put myself through the "pain" of long-distance running...
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25823558-surfing-uncerta...
Curiosity has led me to a better understanding of how large-scale systems work, which removes many of the negative emotions that people tend to have about them, which is important when you're living inside one. :-)
Generosity provides an emotionally powerful "desired state" to work toward. I think most people enjoy the idea of a harmonious, prosperous, generous world, and that's a fun challenge to work on.