Emotional 401k

“I am curious in my sadness, and I am curious in my joy. I am everseeking, everfeeling. I am in awe of the beautiful moments life gives us, and I am in awe of the difficult ones.”

– Bianca Sparacino, Seeds Planted in Concrete

The paradox of pleasure.

I’ll start with an example of an interaction I had with my 5th-grade students last week as we hesitantly introduced them to a concept that, for a long time now, has been strategically removed from our lives; a concept that has terrorized kids for generations. A feeling– a part of the human experience that has been collectively hated, feared, and dare I say wrongfully ostracized.

Boredom.

For just a few minutes, we practiced it; the goal was to have the students seated or lying on the floor of the gym, in silence, with the lights off. That’s all. And, despite the perpetual movement, sighs, and vocalizations that were nothing if not coos, we got through it.

After torturing them with nothing, I had to explain myself:

“I know, just by looking around the room, that this was super uncomfortable for you guys. But clearly, this is something that we have to work on. Let’s use exercise as an example… personally, my weakest lift is the bench press. I suck at it. It’s uncomfortable, it makes me feel weak, and I hate it. So, what does this mean I should do? Should I just say it’s too hard and I don’t like it and never bench press again for the rest of my life?”

“Noo!!”, they respond.

“So, what should I do?”

“You should do it more!!” comes from a handful of kids who’ve managed to maintain that precious currency that is their attention.

It seems so obvious, but I wish they were aware of just how profound that response actually is. They know that in order to get better at the bench press, avoiding it doesn’t make sense… I’ll only get weaker, I need to push (literally) through the pain of sucking at bench press if I’m to see improvement. Why then, so long as this logic is applied to our emotional state, does it seem as though we’ve villainized the very concept that these ten-year-olds have easily identified as beneficial?

Let’s think logically; who in their right mind would intentionally do something that puts them in an uncomfortable state of being when they could choose not to? Like walking to the store to pick up groceries when you can just drive, or drinking that almost gag-worthy green veggie smoothie when you can just… not, or sitting in boredom or awkwardness when you can just pull up Instagram and be entertained. Certainly, anyone who would pick discomfort over comfort is either deranged or extremely pretentious. At the surface, it sure feels that way, but doesn’t the surface inherently lack depth?

There is well-established and growing research that supports a logic quite contrary to that used above. Dr. Anna Lembke, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic, is a leading researcher in this field. She appeared on an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Hidden Brain, during which she used an example of her findings that felt, at once, blatantly obvious and powerfully revealing:

“What the science of hormesis shows, in humans and in animals, is that if you expose an organism to mild to moderate doses of painful, toxic, or noxious stimuli, you will actually make that organism healthier, more resilient, more robust.” She later continued, “...things like exposure therapy; forcing ourselves to do things that make us psychologically uncomfortable. These are all things that are hard in the initial experience, but essentially trigger our body to sense injury, and in sensing injury, our bodies start to upregulate our protective (feel-good) hormones… so, it’s a really great way to reset our joy threshold to the side of pleasure.”

Our inclination to move toward comfort and away from challenge is only natural. However, our nature may not always be in our best interest; could it be that we must actively seek discomfort– pain, even– in order to receive lasting pleasure? Truthfully, I rewrote that previous sentence a number of times as I feel I’m being quite zealous, almost radical, writing it. But, I think that only serves to reinforce the point I’m trying to make: Deeply into the fabric of our culture have we woven this idea that pain and discomfort are to be eradicated from the human experience; so to claim a contradictory perspective is to somehow take an extreme stance in challenging nature.

Learning to embrace undesirable experiences can be profoundly impactful on the way we perceive our lives. If we understand that things like frustration, anxiety, sadness, awkwardness, confusion, shame, embarrassment, grief, etc. are not only acceptable, but necessary feelings, we can grow in ways we’ve never expected. Therein lies the paradox of pleasure.

Avoiding pain and chasing pleasure is a path filled with the former and void of the latter.