Some people think that growth is the result of suffering. No pain, no gain. Yes, people can experience growth after difficult experiences. But do we need to suffer to grow? In this video, I’m exploring the ways we grow as well as the fallacy of “no pain, no gain.” Join me in thinking about this by watching the short video. Thanks.
The following is a text version of this blog posting.
I was scrolling on Facebook the other day and saw that someone posted a quote that received lots of positive reactions. I read it and re-read it. I read the responses which praised the insight in the quote and affirmed that it was true. Finally, I took a deep breath and said to myself, “No. This is wrong.” The quote said that our best growth in life is the result of suffering. That’s like taking, “no pain, no gain,” and putting it on steroids.
How is it that we grow as people? What role do pain and suffering have in our growth?
When a child is born, it’s surely a traumatic experience. To be expelled from the safety of the womb where there is warmth and nourishment to enter the cold, sterile delivery room and experience all kinds of new sensations has to be shocking. That’s how our lives begin. Based on that image, I can understand why someone may connect pain, suffering, or discomfort with growth. After all, that’s how we each came into this world.
Yes, there’s also what’s called post-traumatic growth. Over the last ten years or so, psychologists have started to study and gain an understanding of how people grow and thrive following a traumatic experience. This seems contrary to the belief that trauma leaves people essentially broken. But even those who have prolonged post-traumatic stress disorder also grow after trauma.
Yes, we do have the ability to grow, to develop, to become more than we once were following periods of pain, suffering, and trauma. I’ve experienced such growth in my life and I’ve seen it in the lives of others. It’s remarkable. But it’s a mistake to conclude that pain and suffering are necessary for growth. Instead, growth is natural for human beings. We have a tendency to grow. You could say that we are programmed to grow.
When I was in college, I went away on a weekend retreat with a campus group. There was a mixture of young people like me and older adults from the campus community. I don’t remember much about the retreat except a conversation I had one day while walking with a woman who was probably about 35. I guess I was about 20 years old. I was very intently talking about wanting to grow and be the best person I could be. I had the notion that to be my best self I had to strip away everything that wasn’t me, to be vigilant and stern with myself in order to make sure that I grew to be the best person I could be. I must have really gotten into what I was saying because the woman I was walking with stopped, grabbed me by both shoulders, and told me to look at her. She said slowly and clearly: Growth doesn’t require pain. It’s not about suffering. Once she had my attention, she went on to explain. She asked that I think about the walk we were taking in the country on a beautiful day. She said that she didn’t know about me, but that she was growing. She was inspired by the surroundings and having this conversation. Of course, there was nothing painful about it. No suffering. Clearly, this is one of those moments of growth — that conversation – that has stayed with me.
Many families have a wall or doorpost in their home where they mark year to year how much each child has grown. The growth happens. Children outgrow their clothes, they outgrow their toys, and they grow from childhood to adolescence and then to adulthood. It happens. It’s not based on pain and suffering but on our ability to grow.
The wonder of being human is that we grow. No matter what conditions we find ourselves living in, the human tendency is to grow. Even when those conditions work against us, we continue to find ways to grow. We grow physically, psychologically, and spiritually – in every dimension of our lives.
The important thing is to nurture our growth. This means taking care of ourselves, body, mind, and spirit. Events and situations in life can limit our growth. Those things often include pain and suffering. Yet we have the capacity to grow even when we have experienced pain and suffering.
While I’m glad that people can identify their growth when life presented them with difficulties caused them pain, the source of the growth isn’t the pain. We grow because the human spirit aims to thrive, to grow, and to allow us to become more than we are. That’s the nature of being human.