poverty, starvation, and disease from the population, they mistook this
improvement of pain to be the elimination of pain. Many public intellectuals
and pundits continue to make this mistake today: they believe that growth has
liberated us from suffering, rather than merely transmuting that suffering from
a physical form to a psychological form.^28
What the Enlightenment did get right is the idea that, on average, some
pain is better than others. All else being equal, it is better to die at ninety than
at twenty. It’s better to be healthy than it is to be sick. It’s better to be free to
pursue your own goals than to be forced into servitude by others. In fact, you
could define “wealth” in terms of how desirable your pain is.^29
But we seem to have forgotten what the ancients knew: that no matter
how much wealth is generated in the world, the quality of our lives is
determined by the quality of our character, and the quality of our character is
determined by our relationship to our pain.
The pursuit of happiness plunges us head-first toward nihilism and
frivolity. It leads us toward childishness, an incessant and intolerant desire for
something more, a hole that can never be filled, a thirst that can never be
quenched. It is at the root of corruption and addiction, of self-pity and self-
destruction.
When we pursue pain, we are able to choose what pain we bring into our
lives. And this choice makes the pain meaningful—and therefore, it is what
makes life feel meaningful.
Because pain is the universal constant of life, the opportunities to grow
from that pain are constant in life. All that is required is that we don’t numb it,
that we don’t look away. All that is required is that we engage it and find the
value and meaning in it.
Pain is the source of all value. To numb ourselves to our pain is to numb
ourselves to anything that matters in the world.^30 Pain opens up the moral
gaps that eventually become our most deeply held values and beliefs.
When we deny ourselves the ability to feel pain for a purpose, we deny
ourselves the ability to feel any purpose in our life at all.