Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Learning and Pain


Learning often comes through pain, the pain of facing the consequences or the pain of hard to answer questions, etc. In these cases, the pain serves as a trigger. What happens if someone gives you a pain killer or tries to prevent you from the pain? Doesn’t he/she prevent you from the learning as well? Secondly, can someone else experience that pain and make you learn?

Say we are talking about reaching school in time. One way could be that you reach late and face the consequences. The consequences give you ‘enough’ pain to start thinking what can I do differently to reach in time. Other way is that someone else is constantly worried about you reaching in time and keeps showing you the consequences while the intention is to ‘protect’ you from the consequences. We may get desired results in this method as well but, there YOUR goal is not to reach in time but, to keep that someone else satisfied. You always need that someone else for reaching in time. What’s your learning?

If you reach late to school one day, you get another chance the next day. What if you don’t get another chance? This is a standard debate. Is it fine to always let people face the consequences (and experience the pain)? What if the consequences are irreparable? Is there anything irreparable in our life? In the first place, what is a damaging consequence which needs repair? We usually treat the consequences which give unhappiness as damaging. But, do you really become happy for whole life by facing the seemingly non damaging consequences?

I have seen immense recovery power in life. I believe there is nothing irreparable but, I say this intellectually. In practice, I have often seen this belief shaking. I want to know what others feel.

No comments:

Post a Comment