Hurts So Good: A Selection from Paul Bloom’s The Sweet Spot (2021)

“Under the right circumstances and in the right doses, physical pain and emotional pain, difficulty and failure and loss, are exactly what we are looking for. . . . Think about your own favorite type of negative experience. Maybe you go to movies that make you cry, or scream, or gag. Or you might listen to sad songs. You might poke at sores, eat spicy foods, immerse yourself in painfully hot baths. Or climb mountains, run marathons, get punched in the face in gyms and dojos. . . .

It turns out that the right kind of pain can set the stage for enhanced pleasure later on; it’s a cost we pay for a greater future reward. Pain can distract us from our anxieties, and even help us transcend the self. Choosing to suffer can serve social goals; it can display how tough we are or, conversely, can serve as a cry for help. Unpleasant emotions such as fear and sadness are part of play and fantasy and can provide certain moral satisfactions. And effort and struggle and difficulty can, in the right contexts, lead to the joys of mastery and flow. . . .

People, typically young men, sometimes choose to go to war and, while they don’t wish to be maimed or killed, they are hoping to experience challenge, fear, and struggle—to be baptized by fire, to use the clichéd phrase. Some of us choose to have children, and usually we have some sense of how hard it will be; maybe we even know of all the research showing that, moment by moment, the years with young children can be more stressful than any other time of life. (And those who don’t know this ahead of time will quickly find out.) And yet we rarely regret our choices. More generally, the projects that are most central to our lives involve suffering and sacrifice. If they were easy, what would be the point? . . .

This book defends three related ideas. First, certain types of chosen suffering—including those that involve pain, fear, and sadness—can be sources of pleasure. Second, a life well lived is more than a life of pleasure; it involves, among other things, moral goodness and meaningful pursuits. And third, some forms of suffering, involving struggle and difficulty, are essential parts of achieving these higher goals, and for living a complete and fulfilling life.”—Paul Bloom, The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning (2021)