A friend of mine was venting on her relationship problem one day, and she said that her parents disapprove of her boyfriend because “he will never earn as much money as her father” – a billionaire. Meanwhile she, herself, does not need to work to enjoy her family’s wealth that, according to her mother, others cannot accumulate in several lifetimes. This incident fully convinced me that there are gains that do not require one to experience any pain.
If you had asked me this question a few years ago, I would have said “agree” without any hesitation, just like everyone else, but now times have changed. Now I realise that this quote could just be an excuse or a reason for a person to endure unnecessary agony in hope of striking a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. However, in reality, people can be born with the privilege and fortune that others can only dream about. So, how can “no pain, no gain” even be valid?
Another thing that cannot be earned by experiencing excruciating pain is affection. Gatsby had survived a war and risked everything to become a man of wealth for the sole purpose of making himself worthy of Daisy’s love. But at the end of the Great Gatsby, a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, Daisy did not even bother to show up at his funeral. Enduring immense pain cannot gain one love. On the contrary, sometimes it is like holding onto sand – the harder one tries to hold on to it, the faster it runs away.
In Hong Kong, there is this popular concept called “winning at the starting line”. Parents want to boost their kids like how Mario Kart players spam the acceleration button at the start of the game to have a head-start. The parents think that if the children endure pain at an early age, it leads to an easier life later. However, what they fail to notice is that life is not a 100-metre sprint. It is more like a full-length marathon. Having a head-start does not mean winning the race, there are still various factors that could affect the end result of the race – like the unexpected green and red shells at Mario Kart. People could suffer continuous pain without earning the ideal gain.
Yuzuru Hanyu, two-time Olympic champion of the male singles figure skating, asked “why is the effort not rewarded?” He dedicated all his effort and risked fracturing his ankle just to achieve the perfect quad axel – a figure skating jump that has yet to be completed by a male at any competition. After failing to achieve the “perfect jump” at the recent Beijing Winter Olympic, he bowed down and stroked the surface of the ice rank while pondering whether “the ice doesn’t like him anymore”. The tribulations he has gone through made him one of the most deserving people to achieve his goal, yet reality has proven otherwise.
“No pain, no gain” provides false hope to people that after going through “pain” there will definitely “gain”, and it ignores the fact that there are natural gains. I am not here to discourage you from working hard, yet I am hoping that you can work hard for not the end result but the comfort in the process.
Photos courtesy of Unsplash
