Thing To Be Today But Not So You'd Notice It: nocireceptive.

 To be nocireceptive is to feel pain.

It can be a heck of a nuisance at times - like now, actually, when I've done my shoulder in - but even at the moment I can just about see that the pain is a useful way of telling me to stop doing stuff that will injure me further.

Being nocireceptive is certainly useful for alerting you to the fact that you're sitting on an ants' nest, or that your soup is at boiling point, or that you've trodden on a drawing pin.*

No pain no gain, say various people who want to improve themselves. And they may be right.

In any case, how would the world work if we didn't feel pain? We'd all have ant-bitten bottoms and burned mouths and tiny holes in our feet, obviously; but what if we couldn't cause each other pain?

How would war be different? And crime? And injuries? And illness?

Now there would be a bit of sci-fi I'd be interested to read.

But, even so, here's hoping none of us notice that we're nocireceptive today.

Thing To Be Today But Not To You'd Notice It: nocireceptive. The Latin word nocēre means to injure. Recipere means to receive.

*I believe these are called thumb tacks in America. All nice words.