Pain and Pleasure are Traffic Signs, not the Destination

We need pain and pleasure: they help us to survive, just like any other part of us, but there's the thing: it's only one part of us, and we should see it in perspective. Pain and pleasure aren't the meaning of life, if anything, to some degree they indicate life, but they aren't what life is. They are like symbols, and symbols aren't what they refer to. They are made to point us in the right direction, like traffic signs: pain is a danger triangle, pleasure is a directional arrow. It doesn't tell us where we should go, only where we can go — it doesn't answer the question what road we choose to take.