bearable

Just a gradual, bearable, steady impoverishment in a world where savings linked to the value of paper money languish.

When the stages of life are followed in order: birth, aging, illness, and death—they are bearable.

In retrospect, my wife—journalist, mother, yoga phenom—clearly had a somewhat extreme interpretation of bearable.

What is it, then, that makes this conflict not only possible and bearable but even pleasant?