I never threw a party until I was in my late 30s. I was always afraid people wouldn’t show up, or, even worse, that they would show up and quickly want to leave.

It felt like this particular fate could not be risked, which meant party-throwing was off the table. Other people could throw parties I guess, but I could not.

“No parties may be held in this lifetime” is quite a high cost to pay, just to protect yourself from a very occasional sort of pain. Yes it feels bad to have a lame party, but does it make sense to station yourself forever outside of the party-having population, solely to avoid having to feel that bad feeling two or three times in your life?

When I did start hosting parties, the usual outcome was that they were tremendously fun. Only one was genuinely disappointing. I had unwittingly scheduled it on the same day as another, more elaborately planned party. Several loyal attendees also got called into work or got sick and/or injured. Still, five or six excellent people showed up, including some who had gone to both parties. We sat around the kitchen table eating snacks and collaborating hilariously on a crossword.

Of course, now that I’ve actually “suffered” this long-avoided type of pain, it barely registers as a meaningful risk anymore. Why did I give up so much to protect against it?

I think this situation is common – to be giving up way too much in an effort to protect against certain kinds of pain. When protecting yourself from a certain unpleasant possibility becomes non-negotiable, you’re liable to suffer in other ways, often to a much greater degree.

For example, I used to dread small talk so much that I avoided meeting new people altogether. As we all know, small talk can be tedious or awkward, especially if you’re not good at it. It can create a kind of pain you might be tempted to avoid. But treating that as an unacceptable risk can result in far more pain, just in different forms.

I lived in fear of being introduced to any new person. My stomach sank when a friend would bring along someone I didn’t know. I especially feared the moment when that friend would excuse themselves to go the restroom, forcing me to make conversation with the stranger. Because I avoided these situations at all costs, I didn’t develop the skills to handle those situations. I declined most invitations to social events to pre-empt the possibility of experiencing this kind of pain.

Avoiding this one occasional type of pain created an entire hell-pattern of its own – the chronic pain of loneliness, alienation, self-esteem issues, and dependence on others. This is a ridiculous price to pay, in genuine suffering, for protection against the first kind. It’s like paying a billion dollars for an extended warranty on your laptop.

This is what happens when you avoid something “at any cost.” It ends up costing you a lot.

Most people wouldn’t get stuck in the same place I did, but there are many ways to fall into a massively lopsided pain-for-pain exchange. I’d guess each of us is caught up in at least a few of them.

Regular exercise is as close we have to a magic bullet for promoting overall health and disease prevention. If you exercise regularly, you feel better almost all the time, you look better, you gain confidence and energy, you sleep better, you live years longer, and those years are easier in many ways. But it requires a modest amount of vigorous manual labor each week, which is not always pleasant. Avoiding this modest amount of discomfort can literally take years off your life and lower its quality. But at least you avoided the displeasure of lifting a dumbbell.

In order to prevent the pain of feeling deprived occasionally, people spend money they don’t have and suffer constant financial stress.

In order not to risk the occasional unpleasant reaction, a person might get the same haircut for 20 years even though they feel stagnant and uncool every day.

In order to avoid the experience of making bad drawings for a few months, a person may never explore their interest in art, and always feel envious of people who do.

They get more subtle than this. The person who gets their friend to print things for them for years, rather than confronting the slightly intimidating task of buying a printer. The guy (me) who lives with a leaky faucet for years because he will not take an afternoon to figure out how to fix it. The person who never goes to the most interesting areas of town because they avoid parallel parking.

There’s also the person (and there are now millions of them) who avoids even a single minute of boredom or non-stimulation, and is utterly addicted to their phone.

Horrible deals abound.

As strong as these needlessly painful habits can be, they are choices, and we can at any moment switch the kind of pain we’re subjecting ourselves to.

It just takes a moment of adventurousness. I will risk embarrassment and do something new with my hair. I will get familiar with feeling of physical exertion, and become fit and strong for the first time in my adult life. I will learn the ins and outs of small talk, confronting its temporary pains, and free myself to socialize normally. Instead of getting annoyed by my sink six times daily, I will locate instructions on installing a faucet and carefully follow them.

Growth often takes exactly that form: choosing a different kind of pain. When you’ve had enough of the pain of loneliness and alienation, you can choose to risk the pain of rejection and awkwardness. And you might find that that’s a much better (and less painful) choice. When you’ve had enough of the pain of financial stress, you can choose the pain of budgeting and self-restraint, and you might discover just how much better it’s possible to feel.

Choosing a different kind of pain can end a long era of chronic suffering in your life, and sometimes the only cost is a few unpleasant minutes here or there. All you have to do is occasionally get curious about the kinds of pain you haven’t been choosing.  

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Pool photo by Eric Nopanen