Pain can be good, worthwhile
Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, and was famously quoted by Christina Aguilera, “What doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”
Many people find early college an emotionally tumultuous time. This challenge is what gives us the chance to grow and expand. Sure, no one wants to live in a state of discomfort, but I think nothing can improve if we don’t open to change, and change is usually uncomfortable.
I decided to attempt more growth by taking genocide in the modern era.
The class is great, if emotionally strenuous. This is a good way to push myself, but I got a bit more then I knew I anticipated. To the best of my knowledge, no one in my family has ever been involved in a genocide. That’s probably why I got hit so hard.
Our generation is often mocked for getting “triggered,” but this is a one-dimensional view. In fact, a Gallup poll found that 72 percent of college students “reject the idea that colleges should be able to restrict speech expressing political views that may upset of offending members of certain groups.” This shows that the claim that we’re opposed to free speech is nonsense.
The real issue is a growing awareness of emotional soft spots. For me, that spot is sexual assault.
No one likes the idea of rape, but as I wrote last semester, I am a survivor of sexual assault. So sometimes the subject can make me emotional.
As we progress through the modern history of genocide in class, we came to the Bosnian ethnic cleansing and firsthand accounts of rape as a matter of policy against different groups. I was caught unexpectedly crying in the Muenster University Center pit lounge while I read an account of a man who was forced to rape a young girl, both at gunpoint.
I didn’t know coming in I would be made to feel such painful empathy for people killed 20 years ago in a culture completely alien to my own. Let me be clear, I’m certain my discomfort wasn’t intended by my professor, and no one would have judged me if I had needed to step out of the room during our discussion. But I chose not to. I chose to work through my emotions and pain, and I’m really glad that I did.
My empathy was mostly stirred by Muslim women from a poor Eastern European country going through one of the worse crises in recent world history.
None of that sounds like me, a Christian American man eating Ben & Jerry’s for emotional support. (I’m not paid, just a fan.) Because I was able to share this one small but potent connection with these very different people, I gained a greater understanding of the human condition.
By no means did a young, privileged man from the Midwest understand what it felt like to be a victim of genocide. However, I think I got closer to understanding people who are very different from me.
That is a huge component in what I want from my education. If you know a conversation or discussion will be too much for your mental health, don’t take part in it. It isn’t worth your mental health.
But if you think you can find the strength, I would recommend pushing through, the experience is worth it.
