Which pain will you choose?

In our home, I do a lot of the talking and my wife does a fair bit of listening, which is a bit unusual for most relationships.  It works for us.

When my wife does talk, she often has something very wise to say, and this article is brought to you by one of those wise sayings.

To be fair, it wasn’t her saying, but the way she contextualised it meant that she had owned it, and in her sharing of it, it really was her wisdom.

She shared a quote that said effectively, “whether you give up or keep going, the pain is the same, so what pain will you choose?”

I see it so often in my work.  It’s also in churches.  I’ve also seen it in my counselling work.  I encounter many different individuals, some you could characterise as being cynical, negative, pessimistic, and perhaps overly realistic, whereas others are optimistic, positive, and perhaps even a little overly idealistic.  The contrasts are stark.

I’d much prefer to have a discussion with the latter kind of person than with the former, even if realism is better than idealism.  There’s something about negativity that just feels like a mountain to climb before you’ve even started.

There’s an open-mindedness in the latter, more optimistic person.  Open-mindedness reveals open heartedness.  But close-mindedness is a barrier to the curiosity needed to overcome the hardships of life.

It’s this latter kind of person who is more commonly given to attitudes and approaches that are inherently resilient, whereas cynical people will often talk themselves out of progress—when the pain is the same whichever way we go.  Whatever we do in life involves pain.

The quote is a truthful quote.  It says in effect that giving up isn’t the easy option even though it seems to be the easy option, because what we don’t foresee when we give up is the regret we feel and face later when we see others succeed who had the pluck to carry on committed to doing what’s right.

We don’t see that regret early on, yet when we do it’s too late to go back and have a do over.  The pain of carrying on, of swallowing hard when disaster strikes, of picking ourselves up by our bootstraps, of taking a breath before moving on, is a momentary pain.

Sure, it’s hard, but there are so many hard things in life.  We must choose our hard.

Think about the ease of giving up, of justifying our unproductive attitude and action, the reaction to the negativity, that surrenders to the enemy, that becomes despondent in the face of challenge, and the justification for such a decision is always fraught with folly—even when it feels good, or we feel justified.

It really doesn’t matter how much we justify our own actions, for times it might feel wise in your own eyes, but if it doesn’t align with true wisdom, it is always folly.  My mother always called this cutting your nose off despite your face.  Yet we’ve all had situations in our life where we made such decisions and came to regret them.

It is easier in the long run to grit our teeth and to make the right decision, no matter the cost, because the cost of making a tough decision is rarely costlier than making the decision that seems easy but always involves hardship in the end.

We are destined to live with the consequences of our decisions.  And there are two ways of learning wisdom, the first is to observe the mistakes, errors, lapses, and violations of others, and the second is to make them ourselves.  The important thing is that we learn and turn those regrets into wise actions in the future.  Learn and turn.  That’s wisdom.

The pain involved in making the right decision is a clean pain, but the pain involved in making the wrong decision is always messy.

Do we give up or keep going?  Both involve pain.  Which pain will you choose?

Let me pray for you just now:

Dear Lord,

I pray for each one that reads these words, that they will pray for your wisdom, for discernment, for your help, and most of all be humble enough to see the right way of responding and give them the courage to do what is needed.

Amen.