Pain can teach us. But the mind can keep charging us after the lesson ends.
I was thinking about suffering when Darius Foroux entered my imaginary room. Alfred Adler was already there, quietly watching us. I poured coffee and asked what had been bothering me. Why does some suffering teach us, while other suffering simply drains us?
Foroux smiled because his recent essay begins with that distinction. Not all suffering deserves the same response. Some comes from hitting reality and discovering something must change. Other suffering comes from the stories our minds keep repeating.
“So suffering can be useful?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” Foroux replied. “Failure, rejection, and disappointment can teach us something.”
Adler leaned forward.
“But the event is only part of the story,” he said.
That caught my attention.
Pain from reality
Suppose I start a business and customers do not come. That hurts because reality has given me information. Perhaps the product is wrong, or my price is wrong. Maybe I misunderstood what people actually needed.
Reality is pushing against my expectations. I can complain, but the empty store remains empty. I have to examine what happened. The discomfort becomes useful when it improves my judgment.
Foroux describes something similar from his writing business. Early course registrations sometimes looked disappointing. He would immediately imagine that the entire launch had failed. Yet later registrations usually made the launch work out.
“So the first numbers were real,” I said.
“Yes,” Foroux replied. “But my conclusion was premature.”
Adler nodded.
“Reality gave you information,” he said. “Then your interpretation added suffering.”
That distinction stayed with me.
The second suffering
A painful event may happen once. The mind can replay it a hundred times. Someone rejects us, and that hurts. Then we begin predicting rejection everywhere else.
One rejection becomes a forecast about our whole future. The first pain came from reality. The second came from the story we built around it. Nothing new had actually happened.
This does not mean emotions are imaginary or unimportant. Fear feels real because fear is real. But feelings do not always describe the outside world accurately. Sometimes they describe our interpretation of it.
I looked at Adler.
“So our suffering depends partly on meaning?”
He answered carefully.
“An experience does not explain itself,” he said. “We give it meaning.”
That idea sits near the center of Adler’s philosophy. Foroux uses it strongly in his essay. The past influences us, but it cannot write every future chapter. We still participate in deciding what our experiences mean.
When an event becomes an identity
This may be where suffering becomes especially dangerous.
Something happens to us. Then we turn what happened into who we are. A business fails, and we decide we are failures. A relationship ends, and we decide we are unlovable.
We make a mistake and call ourselves foolish. One event slowly becomes an identity. Adler would challenge that move. The experience happened, but its meaning does not have to remain frozen.
Foroux makes the same point more practically. Why should yesterday decide what tomorrow allows us to become? Past experience may shape our starting point. It does not completely determine our direction.
I liked that idea, but something still bothered me.
“What about suffering that really damages people?” I asked.
Neither man answered immediately.
Not every pain makes us stronger
We often hear that suffering builds character. Sometimes it does. But suffering can also weaken people. It can overwhelm judgment and destroy confidence.
Pain does not automatically contain wisdom. Foroux’s distinction needs that qualification. Useful suffering is not simply suffering that comes from reality. Its usefulness depends on what we can actually learn.
Likewise, worry is not always useless. Anxiety may point toward a problem needing attention. Worry about money might reveal unstable income. Concern about someone we love might reveal unresolved conflict.
So perhaps the deeper distinction is not pain versus worry.
It is information versus repetition.
Is there new information here?
That became the question I wanted to ask.
Suppose I worry about tomorrow. Does the worry reveal something I can investigate? Does it show something I should prepare for? Does it point toward an action within my control?
If so, the discomfort may contain information. Something still needs attention. Thinking about it may help me understand or act. The worry is doing work.
But suppose I have already examined the problem. Nothing new has appeared. No useful action remains. My mind simply runs the same frightening movie again.
Then I may be suffering twice.
Reality gave me the first pain.
My imagination keeps sending the invoice.
Foroux laughed when I said that.
Adler smiled too.
When repetition pretends to be thinking
Foroux calls for judgment. I think this may be his essay’s deepest lesson. The important skill is not toughness. It is discernment.
We need to recognize what kind of signal discomfort contains. Sometimes it says something outside us needs attention. Sometimes something inside us needs examination. Sometimes it says nothing new at all.
That last kind may be hardest to recognize.
The mind can make repetition feel like problem solving. We believe we are thinking because we keep returning to something. But useful thinking should eventually produce better understanding or better action. Otherwise, we may only be rehearsing fear.
That gives us a useful test.
Am I still learning something new?
If the answer is yes, keep listening.
If the answer is no, perhaps the lesson has already ended.
Adler’s harder question
I turned toward Adler again.
“What should we do with the past?”
He might answer with another question.
“What are you using it for?”
That question is uncomfortable.
We can use the past to understand ourselves. That can be useful. But we can also use it to explain why change feels impossible. The same past can become information or imprisonment.
A failure becomes permission to avoid another attempt. A rejection becomes protection against intimacy. A painful history becomes permission to expect nothing different. Yesterday quietly begins controlling tomorrow.
The experience has not changed.
But our relationship with it has.
Foroux brings us back to today
Foroux’s argument is more practical.
He wants us to stop spending energy on suffering that produces nothing. He does not deny failure or difficulty. Those experiences can contain useful information. The problem begins when we keep multiplying them.
A setback happens once. We mentally transform it into ten future setbacks. A bad morning becomes a bad week. One uncertain result becomes a predicted disaster.
Reality has not done all that.
We have.
ONES asks the final question
So I returned to my original question.
“Is reality teaching me something, or is my mind making me suffer twice?”
Adler looked at Foroux.
Foroux looked at me.
Neither man needed to answer.
The question itself had become a useful test.
When pain arrives, I can ask what reality is showing me. I can look for facts, patterns, choices, and lessons. I can decide whether something still needs action.
Then I can ask one more question.
Have I learned everything this moment can currently teach me?
If the answer is no, I keep listening.
If the answer is yes, more suffering may add nothing.
I do not need to deny the pain. I do not need to pretend everything is fine. I simply do not have to keep asking pain for another lesson.
Reality may charge me once.
My mind does not have to keep sending the invoice.
Credits
Inspired by Darius Foroux’s essay, “Use Suffering to Improve Your Life.”
Source: https://dariusforoux.medium.com/use-suffering-to-improve-your-life-fc8f5ca856c6
The essay also draws on Alfred Adler’s view that experience influences us, but does not completely determine who we become.
The conversation between Adler, Foroux, and the narrator is imagined. It is used to explore the ideas presented in the source.
Tags
#Life_Lessons #Personal_Growth #Stoicism #Psychology #Self_Awareness
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