This reminds me of the continuum concept:

We had traded our slightly too small aluminium canoe for a much too big
dugout. In this vessel carved from a single tree, seventeen Indians at one
time travelled with us. With all their baggage added to ours and everyone
aboard, the vast canoe still looked rather empty. Portaging it, this time
with only four or five Indians to help, over half a mile of boulders beside
a large waterfall was depressing to contemplate. It meant placing logs
across the path of the canoe and hauling it, inch by inch, in the merciless
sun, slipping inevitably into the crevices between the boulders whenever
the canoe pivoted out of control and scraping one's shins, ankles and
whatever else one landed on against the granite. We had done the portage
before with the small canoe, and the two Italians and I, knowing what lay
ahead, spent several days dreading the hard work and pain. On the day lye
arrived at Arepuchi Falls we were primed to suffer and started off
grimfaced and hating every moment, to drag the thing over the rocks.

When it swung sideways, so heavy was the rogue pirogue, it several times
pinned one of us to the burning rock until the others could move it off. A
quarter of the way across all ankles were bleeding. Partly by way of
begging off for a minute, I jumped up on a high rock to photograph the
scene. From my vantage point and momentary dis-involvement, I noticed a
most interesting fact. Here before me were several men engaged in a single
task. Two, the Italians, were tense, frowning, losing their tempers at
everything and swearing non-stop in the distinctive manner of the Tuscan.
The rest, Indians, were having a fine time. They were laughing at the
unwieldiness of the canoe, making a game of the battle: they relaxed
between pushes, laughing at their own scrapes and were especially amused
when the canoe, as it wobbled forward, pinned one, then another, underneath
it. The fellow held barebacked against the scorching granite, when he could
breathe again, invariably laughed the loudest, enjoying his relief.

All were doing the same work; all were experiencing strain and pain. There
was no difference in our situations except that we had been conditioned by
our culture to believe that such a combination of circumstances constituted
an unquestionable low on the scale of well-being and were quite unaware
that we had any option in the matter.

The Indians, on the other hand, equally unconscious of making a choice,
were in a particularly merry state of mind, revelling in the camaraderie;
and, of course, they had had no long build-up of dread to mar the preceding
days. Each forward move was for them a little victory. As I finished
photographing and rejoined the team, I opted out of the civilized choice
and enjoyed, quite genuinely, the rest of the portage. Even the barks and
bruises I sustained were reduced with remarkable ease to nothing more
significant than what they indeed were: small hurts which would soon heal
and which required neither an unpleasant emotional reaction, such as anger,
self pity or resentment, nor anxiety at how many more there might be before
the end of the haul. On the contrary, I found myself appreciative of my
excellently designed body, which would patch itself up with no instructions
or decisions from me.