I heard, in reference dogs, that they are exactly like people; they will do anything for pleasure, and anything to avoid pain, but they'll work twice as hard to avoid pain. Do you think that is true for people?
In truth, I have always thought it was the opposite. I have felt that people are generally pleasure seekers, along with instant gratification. I also have noted pleasure to sooth painful situations (like chocolate during final exams, for a completely unrelated example. *ahem*)
It's got me thinking quite a lot about myself. Believe it or not, I work hard. Really hard. I always feel as though I am being lazy - I am never good enough, working hard enough, nothing will ever be enough... so I push harder, without even realizing it in most cases. Take my college career for example; I never expected to graduate with honors. I figured at best, with everything I have going on, I could be a C student. Instead, I am graduating at the top of my class - summa cum laude. I know that it is only because I kept yelling at myself, pushing myself, telling myself that I wasn't working hard enough, I wasn't doing good enough. A big part of me was genuinely surprised each and every time I received a good grade.
But it's been hard to do that. Incredibly so. I have cried. I have had horrible thoughts. I have wanted to quit. But I didn't. This has literally been a painful experience (on many levels, some of you know of what I speak.) So... why didn't I avoid it? Maybe something is wrong with me, and I'm wired differently? Instead of avoiding pain, I bring it on? Or is it that I worked so hard because not graduating would have been even more painful, thus I worked twice as hard to avoid that pain?
Running is frequently a physically painful thing for me. Working out in general isn't "fun" or pleasurable (though I admit to fully enjoying when I can bench more than Mr. Savy, and lord it over him for the short amount of time until he catches up.) But I don't work to avoid that, as a matter of fact I work to make sure I'm there.... every. darn. day.
It's a little confusing, to be honest. Maybe there are deeper things I am working twice as hard to avoid with my not avoiding the hard things that I could have been avoiding if I was avoiding according to the avoiding theory. (Ok, that was just fun to say.)
Of course, the other possibility is that I am completely defective. I'm wired wrong, and clearly I should be on a beach somewhere seeking out only pleasurable things. Which would involve a chocolate martini, I'm sure.
So tell me, do you work twice as hard to avoid pain as you do to seek out pleasure?
Thursday, May 08, 2008
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3 comments:
I think the kind of pain you are talking about is the kind that leads to reward, or pleasure in the end.
Sure, we could all move to a tropical island and sun ourselves, but eventually we'd run out of food and money and it would end up like an episode of survivor which would be pretty painful.
Running can hurt, but it makes us (or at least me) stronger and emotionally more stable. So I for one take the pain for the long term pleasure. :) I guess I'm less of an instant gratification kind of girl than I used to be...ha ha.
I think I agree with wafelenbak in that it sounds mostly like you're talking about pain in the context of a means to an end, i.e., you've gotta do the work to get the reward. In this context, far more people need to think like you Kyra. America's work ethic is certainly not getting stronger. As for this type of pain, or physical pain, I don't really "fear" it. That is to say, I don't usually seek out some plan of aversion to it. Sometimes I dread it; (I wish it would just go away, but I'm mostly just indifferent to it and don't worry about it. It is what it is.
I don't think one or the other is true for all people -- some are motivated to move away from pain, others are motivated to move towards pleasure. Think of of the people who need the proverbial fire lit under their a$$ to get something done (i.e. last minute Christmas-gift shoppers) vs those enviable people who get everything organized and knocked out ahead of schedule (to use the same example, people who are done with all their shopping by mid-November).
I also think that no one need especially be locked into one group or the other -- I am mostly a procrastinator, but I have gone through episodes in my life where there is something I wanted so badly that I honed in on it and drove towards it like nothing else.
It's interesting that you brought this up -- I just had a related epiphany a few days ago, and it seems like similar thoughts have come up with a few people that I know. I'm going to take it as a sign.
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