Turn Pain into Pure Strength
Time to ditch sub-human life
Everything must be EASY and PAIN should be removed from every aspect of our lives.
Modern society was built to provide us with always more comfort. Technology has reduced friction, time, efforts to make everything available at our fingertips. A simple smartphone gives access to all the knowledge in the world, all the movies, all the songs, all the people. Amazon brings to our door almost every existing product from grocery items to clothing to kitchenware to absolutely every possible thing on earth.
Everything must be EASY, COMFORTABLE and PAINLESS.
Pain must be removed from our life.
I can’t help but thinking of humans in WALL-E who have lost their ability to stand and walk on their legs, and can only move around sitting on a flying armchair.
It’s time to choose power
When faced with the darkest forces of evil, humans can overcome them by turning suffering into sheer power.
The COVID19 pandemic with the inevitable lockdowns across the world have made our lives misery in 2020, now continuing in 2021. A lot of people are suffering and many of us are feeling powerless. Anxiety and depression are eating many of us alive. We more and more feel profound pain. And it’s difficult to accept it. We don’t know how to deal with it anymore.
So I asked myself: “what can I read that will help me to put things in perspective?”. What could be a zillion times worst than my personal suffering of the moment? Many things. Many many personal stories.
Maybe the account of someone who survived the Gulag forced labour camps of the Soviet Union? I bought The Gulag Archipelago from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag was a Soviet network of forced labor camps set up by order of Vladimir Lenin, reaching its peak during Joseph Stalin’s rule from the 1930s to the early 1950s. Twenty-five million people died through internal repression in the Soviet Union.
The author not only survived the horrors of the camps but decided to write a book that would speak for all the victims of the Soviet Gulag. For eternity. This book is a Monument. It provides an incredibly naturalistic description of the Gulag system that destroyed the lives of millions of innocents.
And thus it is that I am writing this book solely from a sense of obligation — because too many stories and recollections have accumulated in my hands and I cannot allow them to perish. I do not expect to see it in print anywhere with my own eyes; and I have little hope that those who managed to drag their bones out of the Archipelago will ever read it; and I do not at all believe that it will explain the truth of our history in time for anything to be corrected.
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. The Gulag Archipelago (Vintage Classics) (p. 282). Random House. Kindle Edition.
Solzhenitsyn literally came back from hell to tell the rest of humanity what it was like to go to hell and come back. He came back.
From the moment you go to prison you must put your cozy past firmly behind you. At the very threshold, you must say to yourself: “My life is over, a little early to be sure, but there’s nothing to be done about it. I shall never return to freedom. I am condemned to die — now or a little later. But later on, in truth, it will be even harder, and so the sooner the better. I no longer have any property whatsoever. For me those I love have died, and for them I have died. From today on, my body is useless and alien to me. Only my spirit and my conscience remain precious and important to me.” Confronted by such a prisoner, the interrogator will tremble. Only the man who has renounced everything can win that victory.
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. The Gulag Archipelago (Vintage Classics) (p. 102). Random House. Kindle Edition.
Solzhenitsyn’s terrible account of the Gulag brought me hope. Hope in the strength of the human mind.
How pain brings strength
It is a fundamental law of nature that in order to gain strength one has to push one’s limits, which is painful. As Carl Jung put it, “Man needs difficulties. They are necessary for health.Yet most people instinctually avoid pain.
Dalio, Ray. Principles (p. 152). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
I bought Ray Dalio’s Principles. I started this second book while reading Solzhenitsyn. Completely different and disconnected from the first one. But bizarrely I found that some of the lessons and principles from Dalio’s book echoed the account from Solzhenitsyn of mind strength and power under extreme suffering over a long period of time.
Most people have a tough time reflecting when they are in pain and they pay attention to other things when the pain passes, so they miss out on the reflections that provide the lessons. If you can reflect well while you’re in pain (which is probably too much to ask), great. But if you can remember to reflect after it passes, that’s valuable too. The challenges you face will test and strengthen you. If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing your limits, and if you’re not pushing your limits, you’re not maximizing your potential.
Dalio, Ray. Principles (p. 153). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
