Juliet, you have a knack for asking questions.
Let's start here: Whenever I hear "gravity" I think of Simone Weil, who says what I've been thinking a century before I thought it:
Lear, a tragedy of gravity. Everything we call base is a phenomenon due to gravity.
I must not forget that at certain times when my headaches were raging I had an intense longing to make another human being suffer by hitting him in exactly the same part of his forehead... When in this state, I have several times succumbed to the temptation at least to say words which cause pain. Obedience to the force of gravity. The greatest sin.
To answer your question: Gravity not a force that pulls down, it is a force that pulls together. Even in a platforming video game, where gravity is defined only in terms of y-acceleration, this is the case. The Kaizo runner thinks of gravity in terms of how it singlehandedly creates the verbs of its game, perhaps the most respectable relationship you can have to a mechanic. It is the seed from which all jumps are created. Of course the force that enables double shell jumps is the same force that makes them fail; it could be no other way!
The lesson this word "gravity" has for us is this: When we are struggling against a hard mathematical problem, or a difficult puzzle, we must be grateful! Not only is it that without gravity, there would be no ennobling struggle against it-- we can say without gravity, there is no jump. Gravity is the gift that allows us to observe the world through experience-- that is, through mutual affecting between us and the world.
So, in my mind, gravity should hurt. It is the force that hurts. Or, if you like, you might say that gravity harms but does not hurt. A parting thought, again from Simone Weil:
Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.
