Anthony Robbins, the famed motivational speaker (I wonder what happened to him now) wrote in his books that man had two primary motives:
Pleasure ("the pursuit of pleasure") - something that a person would find enjoyable, eg. sex, eating, napping, dreaming , having lots of money etc
Pain ("the avoidance of pain") - something that a person would not want to do and doesn't find enjoyment in eg. exercising, dieting, working, not having enough money etc.
I used to think these two emotions (sometimes displayed as greed and fear, displayed during the Lehman fiasco) had been the only motivational forces in people but it dawned on me last Sunday during my church's sermon that pleasure and pain are subjective to the person concerned.
For example, I know of a colleague who seems to live to run marathons, thriving on the out-of-body experience attained during such events. To me, it was unthinkable to find pleasure there.
But as the old adage goes, "one man's meat is another man's poison", so I thought there might be something more than just pleasure and pain. And I realised what it was last Sunday.
If you consider a Muslim extremist or Israeli terrorist (when Israel was not yet a sovereign country) and try to use the pleasure-pain concept, it'd be hard to explain as death would have been the ultimate "pain" that one can never recover from. What "pleasure" that can be derived from this ultimate sacrifice would have been rendered irrelevant. So, how does one reconcile this?
Conviction would be the likely reason.
Convicted of a "greater good", even it meant paying the ultimate price and "pain" - death.
History has shown many such examples. From firemen who died so others may live to the radicals who "sacrificed" themselves, with hopes of creating a "better world" or elimination of "infidels". No better exemplification could be shown by Jesus who bore the sins of the world on the cross, knowing that the greatest pain that He would have to endure was the separation from His Father. But He still did it, because of people like us.
For average Singaporeans like us, we have also been "convicted" that we need to "painfully" set aside 20% of our salary now so that we would be able to provide ourselves with a "pleasurable" retirement (hopefully not an outmoded concept in 30 years when it's my turn) lifestyle in the future.
So, what have you been seeking in life?
Pleasure or Pain?
