I had an amazing track coach at Reno High School. His name was Mark Smith (everyone called him Smitty) and like all great coaches, he knew what high school students needed in their workouts and in their heads in order to be successful both in sports and in life.
Some of the neighborhoods that Reno High School draws from are among the nicest and most expensive in all of Reno. Many students have very dedicated parents who will do anything to help their children succeed, be happy, and avoid pain and suffering. However, these parents often miss an important point, a point that Coach Smitty would always remind parents and athletes, “you can never eliminate suffering, and you can’t protect your child [or yourself] from all pain.”
Sam Quinones, author of Dreamland would certainly agree. In his book he writes, “In heroin addicts, I had seen the debasement that comes from the loss of free will and enslavement to what amounts to an idea: permanent pleasure, numbness, and the avoidance of pain.”
Our society, in TV shows and commercials, continually pushes a narrative that we should be happy and have lots of consumer goods in our lives. We seem to believe that every moment of our lives should be nothing but entertainment and enjoyment, and we pursue that, continuously trying to buy our happiness and avoid any possible pain or suffering. As Coach Smitty said, however, this is not possible, and as Quinones shows throughout Dreamland, this can lead to dangerous consequences. Part of the opioid problem in our country, Quinones argues, is that we place too high a value on never feeling pain and suffering, and we under-invest in the real things that would help us actually overcome and reasonably manage and respond to pain and suffering.
Our mental health, counseling, and therapy services are under-developed and costly. Our economic system doesn’t provide people the support they need in difficult times, and we don’t do a good job of helping get people into jobs that actually feel meaningful. We have built suburbs and isolated ourselves from community, and when we face hard times, we are afraid to admit it and don’t have many close people to turn to. We seek avoidance from these challenges with chemicals like alcohol, opioids, marijuana, or worse. We try to blunt the pain and reduce the suffering artificially, which doesn’t work, and doesn’t help us feel happy or fulfilled.
We have a myth that we can eliminate all the suffering in our lives and in the lives of our loved ones. However, the reality is that we must work to overcome that suffering together. As a team, we can support each other, train each other to be strong during adversity, and learn how to put in hard work and lean into the uncomfortable reality of the world to find a place where we can accept and appropriately respond to suffering and pain.
Coach Smitty passed away on October 12th, 2018. He was a truly great influence in my life and in the life of others. I hope everyone has a Coach Smitty in their lives, and please reach out to say hi and thanks if you do.
Novel Learning 