Pain and gain

If there’s no pain, it’s probably not worth it.

If it hurts, chances are its worth it. Pain and struggle indicate your current threshold of potential. Either you adapt and overcome and grow to be stronger, or you don’t and abandon the pursuit. When you abandon it, you flee its demands, physically and/or psychologically. If you want something really bad, and you are psychologically set on its attainment, and you can’t have it, there is a disconnect that leaves you empty until its fulfillment. It requires you put energy and work into achieving it. Typically this is accompanied with struggle and discomfort. If it doesn’t, that your desire is within your means and probably indicates a goal that is less than worthy of your potential.

When I think about these struggles I relate them to personal goals that involve physical accomplishment like lifting or some other sporting achievement, or character based goals relating to education or the development of virtues, or goals pertaining to relationships and feeling such as friendship and love. Anything worth having is worth working for. If you don’t have to work for it, it probably isn’t worth having, or at least, not to you. No pain, no gain. If it doesn’t hurt, it’s not love. I realize that there are a lot of caveats to this whole theory of pain and value, but it seems to hold true in general. Anytime you invest time or energy into a person, whether you loved them or not, there is a void or pain that accompanies their loss. Chances are, though, they played some kind of important role in your life; otherwise you wouldn’t have shared it with them.