SUFFERING - PART 2. WHY PAIN IS GOOD FOR US
I'm a rebel. When I first heard the idea that suffering is part of life, I said "not for me". I had read about wisdom traditions that say suffering is unavoidable. I had read about other wisdom traditions that say suffering is avoidable, but pain isn’t. That suffering is our way of avoiding pain, of not accepting what is happening to us. That pain is part of life, as is grieving for what is lost.
I rebelled against such way of thinking, because I believed that life is meant to be beautiful, and happy, and that I'm lucky to be alive. The idea that life is suffering felt like blasphemy. Life is meant to be lived at its fullest while we’re alive, young, and healthy. Life is meant to be lived in the moment. Whenever I heard of people suffering, I assumed it was their fault in some way. I distanced myself from the idea of pain by thinking that if I did all the "right" things, I wouldn't suffer. Raised in the stoic tradition of communism, where people were meant to do their work and be content, where complaining was a sign of weakness, and discipline was a sign of strength, I thought that only the weak suffered.
At my first encounter with suffering, I rebelled, and vowed to avoid it in the future by any means. That time in middle school when my first crush didn’t know I existed. That time when I saw my mom cry after my dad left us. That time my beloved uncle died of lung cancer in his thirties. The time I didn’t get into high school. The time I didn’t get the internship to India. And on and on and on. I didn't wish to experience pain. And yet, what I now value most, was often achieved by going through the inevitable tunnel of pain. As I write this and I reflect at times of suffering, I see that each pain taught me a valuable lesson, at the time hidden out of sight. Like a compass, pain made me aware of the direction I needed to go. When we want to go West, it’s essential to know where East is.
One of the people I interviewed for the happiness research I'm conducting, had followed his true path of being a musician. He got into a classical music program and moved to SF. He became a musician, started a band, gave lessons, and made a good living doing what he loved. And yet, while in grad school, he became disillusioned with the classical music world. He didn’t feel part of it. He felt that he should do something different, but didn’t know what, and kept going. “I became miserable. It was a time of unclear thinking” he said. And then, one day, he injured his wrist in a tae kwon do class. He immediately was forced to stop playing music, and became depressed. He contemplated giving up music completely. He soon stopped teaching music, as his confidence and self drive sank. He started walking dogs to make money. At some point he couldn’t continue that either, because he hurt his back in the process. He sank low, and he was desperate.
He started thinking about the meaning of music in his life. He became truly interested in the music itself, and began composing. “I learned how to ask the right questions. I began to teach myself the art of composition.” Once he got himself out of the desperation of not being able to play, his confidence started to grow, and his pain started to decrease. He began teaching again. He became more intent in the way he spent his time. And it all started to slowly build momentum, and he knew he was on the right path. “After my injury, I became interested in composing as my number one activity. I became more serious about music than before. I’ve been engaged in composition this whole time. Then, things started to work out in a different way than before. I figured out how to teach students in a different way. Two and a half years later, I had a breakthrough. I wrote 4 string quartets.”
As I reflected at the pain that came my way, I began to think of it as a signal, a built-in valuable tool that our own core uses to let us know of something we feel that we're not consciously aware of. Pain is our internal thermometer, telling us when we’re off from our true path. It's our compass that points out when we’re headed in the opposite direction we're meant to go.
As I thought more about pain, I remembered when my girls were babies, not long ago. When my first baby first started to cry, I tried to quickly figure out what I needed to do to help her. Did she need a diaper change? If she still cried after that, I’d nurse her. If she still cried, I’d check her temperature. Maybe she was fighting a bug? Maybe she was teething? Or maybe she had a bad dream? I would go through all the possible reasons, and try it. But I didn’t ignore her cry. I think of pain now in a similar way.
A few years after grad school I got an analytical job with a company I’d been pursuing for a while. I was proud of myself, and was happy to finally make good money like my friends did, and that I finally could “fit in”. After awhile, I began making little mistakes on the spreadsheets I was working on, and then bigger ones. I can see now that I was self-sabbotaging, as my core was trying to get myself out of a boring, unfulfilling job. But at the time I couldn't see this. I began feeling embarrassed, feeling like a failure, and despite all my discipline and efforts, I kept making mistakes and hating myself for it. My confidence began to go down, and I felt stuck. I couldn’t grow, or even get another job in that state. I painfully realized that I didn’t like the highly analytical work, and that I was increasingly drawn to more creative work.
I found about a group within the company that was doing more interesting, strategic work, that involved more creative, innovative thinking. I asked one of the people in that team if I could shadow them. I then asked my boss and he was ok with it, as long as I could still finish my own projects. This little victory gave me the energy to focus more on my work. I eventually I noticed that I was making fewer mistakes. Because I didn’t have to correct my work over and over, I became more efficient and had more time to do the work I was interested in. This is how I got to learn about the field of qualitative research, which I ended up pursuing. But the whole process was not easy or straightforward, and it took six years at that one company.
The process of finding our path is not an easy one. But we have tools. We have our pain, which loyally is right by our side, pointing when something is not right. Pain is a stubborn and loyal guru who won't go away until we learn it's trying to teach us. It won't leave until we get on the right path.
