Of burden

I was just thinking of something on the train just now, about the old adage of "suffer now enjoy later", coined by the forefathers of many Singaporean Chinese. The principle of this phrase is that we need commitment in order to achieve our goals, and that suffering comes with commitment. Yet, I can't help but think that this phrase is so simplistic that it may lead to many misunderstandings.

Firstly, it divides our lives into two distinct portions, the striving stage and the enjoying stage. The first stage consists of hard toil, maybe some bitterness but also the perseverance to bear it all. The second is simple pure Nirvana where we enjoy the fruits of our labour.

The thing is, I'm not so sure if our lives can be drawn into such clear periods. As far as I know, life is a continuum, an endless cycle between striving and achieving. For instance, I studied hard for my A levels and entered medical school, yet after enjoying the month long orientation period the reality of schoolwork began to sink in, and thereafter I needed to deal with my father's illness and my new found faith. The cycle continued with a pretty relaxed start to M2, then the horrors of MicroB.

This leads us to question the assumption that if we are to achieve our future goal of say, becoming a surgery consultant, we would be happy. Guaranteed, you work hard as a student and junior doctor to attain your position, but what makes you think that life thereafter is pure heaven? With the achievement of the dream, there are new challenges to pursue, new responsibilities to bear.

And in my opinion, there is everything right about having the continued challenge, or to have a consistent burden, as light as it may be, weighing down on your shoulders. Although we don't like it, these are the things that give us our life force, that we may go ahead and be relevant to the wider world.

If we were ever to reach the enjoying stage, what does this mean? Does it mean that we have no more challenges in life? We no longer need to push ourselves? In a pretty horrific scenario, this could happen at the age of 40, when a person may think that he has reached the pinnacle of his career and that he only needs to enjoy the fruits of his labour from now on. This is scary because it implies that life has ended at 40 for him.

Hence, my main beef with that adage would be in the second portion, where it is said that we "enjoy later". Yet, the first portion is also flawed. It seems to give us the idea that it is a pre-requisite for the present to be filled with suffering in order for the enjoyment to come later, and this happens to the extent that we think we cannot enjoy the present.

Nevertheless, what's wrong with enjoying the process, enjoying every progress you are making towards your goal? This is pragmatic, because it keeps you motivated. Another choice, on the other extreme, is to drive yourself forward based on sheer passionless and resentful determination. Not that determination itself is wrong, but this particular variant breeds bitterness. When you achieve your goal, what makes you think that you'd be transformed into a happy person?

And achieving that goal, now a joyless pursuit, is now meaningless.

So I gathered that although we should be working towards our goals, it would be unwise to deny ourselves even a morsel of happiness before we have reached them. Life is short, we need not punish ourselves. I gathered that as I was doing laps in the swimming pool, feeling the lightness of my body, after some worrying about the data analysis.

And if you have made your way through my essay, I'd show you what I've read that sums up some of my thoughts, that is pretty similar to what I've written here.

If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.
But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?
The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.

The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfilment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.

Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.

What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being