How and why people are attracted to what hurts them. Mental Health.
“When you want to understand something you stand in front of it, alone, without help: all the past in the world is of no use.” Jean-Paul Sartre
What about human nature draws us to things that hurt?
Take coffee, for instance, people love it. It dehydrates us, heightens nerves, and interferes with sleep. Yet adoring humans are willing to pay heaps of cash for it.
The aroma is excellent, and the taste exquisite, not to mention the social and cultural pleasures of casually “grabbing a coffee.” Oh, and the antioxidants, I forgot about those.
There is something about human nature that loves the hurt, justifies it with the rationale that it somehow helps the process of life. But I disagree, & suggest to you that humans love the hurt because it makes them feel alive. Hurt validates that we exist, and without that hurt, humans may become understimulated. And under-stimulation is worse than hurt.
That dead-end job, that going nowhere relationship, the existential anguish accompanying underachievement, it all subsides with a little dose of extraneous hurt.
Hurt gives us a distraction to devote our energies to recuperating. Hurt gives us a reason to misdirect our dedication from the actual things in life we should occupy ourselves repairing—like fixing our minds towards truth, wisdom, courage, kindness, & peace.
Hurt is a drug, and like caffeine, we dress it up with all sorts of reasons not to leave it be and just walk away. Humans want to walk away but the (often unconscious) rationale goes: experimenting with the unfamiliar is risky compared to experimenting with predictable familiars. To confront the unfamiliar, especially within human habits and mental processes, might inflict real, uncontrollable existential suffering on a human. Nervewracking.
Hurt is safe, hurt is familiar. Bogging ourselves down with hurt lowers the ceiling of human potential and with a lower ceiling humans can feel better about achieving less. As long as extra foam exists to simulate that wonderful bubbly feeling on our lips, that extra creamy taste, and that smooth finish, there’s no reason to let go of hurt; there’s no reason a human should risk stimulating itself with that which might cause failure in front of who/what we care about when stability is a dose of familiar hurt away.
But a reason does exist, and its name is suffering.
Hurt is self-inflicted, but suffering is inflicted by a higher mode of life through human submission to life and what it demands. Hurt is like the “here, let me strike your arm so you feel the pain in your leg less” logic derived from juvenile, playground days, while suffering is like “let me spend recess running until pangs of hunger force me to stop” submission to life. If humans will inescapably suffer, there’s little benefit to simultaneously self-inflict hurt—it only amplifies the suffering.
Humans need to save their capacities to be stimulated and to endure for betterment. The logic to follow is: if humans have a finite capacity to endure, then each human owes it to themselves to suffer for the highest causes, to save human capacities to endure for the best version of human. Endurance is not best spent maintaining a version bogged down by easily avoidable hurt, even if there’s some scrumptious extra foam.
Coffee’s sensation always felt nice, to me. The stimulating rush of productivity, the thrill of a racing mind, the perception I was doing everything at the speed of light, all of it made me feel like a better version of myself. That’s what I said, as the ceiling lowered and my parched insides begged and screamed.
One day, I couldn’t pinpoint exactly when I woke up and said enough. Lemon water, bread, and vegetables would be my fill. If I had to employ endurance to keep going, why not employ it on terms which directed it towards suffering for higher causes and purposes in my life, instead of hurting.
Eventually, the extra foam lost its appeal and all that remained was the stimulation of anguish, dread, and angst. When that happened, hurt’s snickering three heads were exposed, and moving on from its clutches filled me with apathy. Nothing positive, nothing negative gripped me then, only the feeling of trudging home through a brisk summer rain shower in soggy sneakers under a peaceful, movie-set sky.
Take care of yourselves, and by all means, enjoy the extra foam while it’s still hot.
-Justin Markowitz
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