Looking Past the Pain

I remember the year my studies were interrupted as the worst year of my life. Beyond the family crisis and subsequent estrangement with my father, I was jealous of my peers’ continuing academic journeys. Mostly, though, I had lost something I believed was a key to progress: structure. I went on to learn a lot on my own, but that path was riddled with hurdles.

The first obstacle I faced was my own nature: I am the kind of person who would rather secure conquered ground – sometimes unnecessarily – than attempt to conquer new territory. In school, you are explicitly told what you need to learn, and there are ways of finding out whether you do. Not so when you are on your own. Nobody is going to tell you there will be a data management test in a fortnight. Other hurdles were the ever-evolving nature of software engineering, and the fact that I could not keep up financially. Picture this: in 2006, I had no idea what Ruby on Rails was. Hell, I was only peripherally aware of PHP, one thing the company I now work for can’t do without (well, we could; we won’t). By the time I finally felt comfortable with one tool, I’d learn it was fading into obsolescence. It was frustrating, to say the least.

Nevertheless, it was all I had. There was no other option. I stayed the course, and learned. I am not an expert yet; that is still years off. But I am confident enough now. More importantly, I learned the value of discipline for myself, by myself. Frustrating, painful, why-do-I-even-bother discipline. Whatever skill you are going to master, whatever vice you are going to give up, whatever healthy habit you are going to adopt will come at that price. Talent and enthusiasm are great, but they each come with a risk. Talent is especially dangerous, in that it robs you of the incentive to work hard and of any sense of achievement when you do. Enthusiasm fizzles out fast, no matter what those frozen smiles on workout infomercials would have you believe. Also, the law of diminishing returns means that the same line of pep talks will only take you so far.

You need something else to keep you on track, something that will help you not lessen the pain but remember its purpose. Vision. Obsessive determination. Those will keep you going through the sleepless nights, the friends that feel deserted and desert you in return, the miles walked, the pennies pinched, the aching muscles, the self-denial. Incoming understatement: it is difficult. It is painful. But the good news is, the more you do it, the better you become, both at the goal you set and at staying the course.

Discipline (n): the continuous choice to suffer by taking action, in order to avoid greater suffering through regret.