Pleasure, pain and beyond

What pleasure do you get by suffering all day and punishing your body? The question was very relevant. The question was thrown while the athlete was training. He replied – Pleasure? I do not do it for pleasure. I do it for pain. The words flashed across my mind for a long minute – I don’t do it for pleasure. I do it for pain. 

I was reading the biography of Lance Armstrong – the cancer survivor. He went on to win the tour de France, which is the most revered and tough event in cycling. And winning it for 5 times in a row requires strenuous effort and patience.  

There are times in life when we are engulfed by pain. Pain so harsh that we feel we may never be able to overcome it. Pain that we feel is killing us each moment. We all would have felt it at such point in our life – it maybe when someone so dear to us left us, it maybe when we couldn’t get a seat into the coveted college, it maybe failing the exam for the first time, it maybe when we had our first breakup.  

I am sure we all have that one friend in school or college who cried incessantly after his breakup. There you were consoling him all along and trying to help him overcome it. At that moment in space time, the situation seemed monumental, insurmountable. At such moment, all the promises that once gave us pleasure once come back and inflict misery in our lives. But as it is said – Time heals everything. The friend would definitely have overcome the breakup and would have fallen in love again this time only to emerge stronger. But during the successive breakup he would have never cried again. At least not to the extent he did for the first time.  

In fact, pain is much like a virus to our body. With time our body develops immunity against pain. But how does the immunity get developed? It gets developed by fighting the virus. It gets developed by fighting the pain. But there is other side to the story – we do get immune to one type of virus but we are still prone to any new virus attacking our body. So, the pain does make a comeback maybe in the form of bad appraisal ratings, or not getting what we deserve. What should we do at such moments? How do we handle it? What lies beyond it? 

This brings me back to Lance Armstrong and what he said – I don’t do it for pleasure. I do it for pain. I was puzzled that why is he saying so. Until I realized – that once you start accepting the situation you are in, a situation which may be as harsh as facing a deadly disease, you do not have luxury of choices. When the question is of life and death, all other problems seem too timid in front of it. Pain at such moments act as liberation. When gloom reaches a threshold limit, it is about liberation. Maybe you had a breakup – the excruciating agony is the liberation point for you towards a new life. Steve jobs was expelled from Apple – it was a liberation point for him to start a new company Pixar. There are multiple instances of famous CEO and successful people dropping out from college and making it big in life. So, my dear Toastmasters, whenever you feel that you cannot take anymore of what is going on in your life, just hold on to that feeling. Use that feeling as a tipping point in your career, in your professional growth. Lance Armstrong trained profusely after overcoming cancer and went on to win Tour de France 5 times in a row. As there is a famous dialogue in movie Rockstar – melodies emerge from a broken heart. When we look at the gloom from this perspective then we all would be able to say – We don’t do it for pleasure, we do it for pain. Because beyond pain lies liberation.