The other day I was walking out of my art history class with a friend, one of us describing a painful experience. The random professor walking in front of us interjected to say that "school shouldn't be painful" before moving on with his own business. It was such an irrelevant comment, but it got me thinking:
isn't it though?
Over the last month, I've identified a theme surrounding everything from classes to relationships: learning is painful. We're told all our lives to pursue knowledge and wisdom and to learn about ourselves and the world. But so often, it just hurts. It's like the violent and continuous birth of the self in the searing light of a new world, or the burning electric fire of serially connecting synapses. Connection and disconnection, building and breaking, stacking and toppling; whether we want to admit it or not, every time we learn something we are changing the way we look at the world, and it isn't always pretty.
Not all learning is painful - you can't say you're sad at the news of a healthy child being born, or when you discover your significant other's cute and quirky secret habit. Likewise, what we learn in the classroom usually doesn't stir in us strong feelings. But when you're trying to figure out how to connect with people, or how to study or write multiple papers simultaneously, you learn a lot of what works and what doesn't from your failures.
I've only had one exam so far, but it taught me pretty quickly (and painfully) that studying is far more important than it was in high school. To be honest, I never really
did study in high school. For the most part, for most of my classes, I just knew what I was doing. Now I have to work. Regardless of how easy or hard that work is, the critical moment was learning that I have to work at all. I have two papers, an exam, and a quiz this week: this weekend will most likely be another lesson in what's effective and what's not. Hopefully I don't come out of it with too many bruises.
Learning can even be physically painful. Yesterday I bought a deck of Magic the Gathering cards - in French. When I brought it to the library with my friends to play I quickly learned how taxing it can be to go back and forth between French and English for long periods of time. I learned a lot about French grammar just by repeating phrases over and over again, but I came out of the library with a massive migraine. It was worth, but it still hurt.
As for relationships... I don't think it's possible to have one
without hurting someone. It's just part of the learning curve. Making new friends, keeping up with old ones, watching other's deal with their relationship issues and looking at mine - it's all part of learning to be a socially competent person. It sucks, but it's probably... most likely... for the better.
There's still a lot of learning to be done, and I'm sure it will hurt, but I have to believe it will be worth it. If I don't, then I would probably be tempted to pick up my bike and start riding to the west coast: because why not?
What do you think? Is learning painful?
Playlist:
I'm the One That's Cool, The Guild
Octobre, Francis Cabrel
Funny the Way It Is, Dave Matthew's Band
Come Sail Away, Styx
Petty Lie, Bryarly Bishop
The word water, Cloudkicker
