I called Vivek Singh, my New Delhi-based coach on a day when I was falling apart. He hates being called a life coach. Instead, he is described as a self-mastery coach. It was the kind of day I didn’t want to discuss philosophy or go through Socratic questioning. I just wanted someone to tell me what was happening to me and why.
“Cut the questions, Vivek,” I said. “I don’t have the bandwidth. Just give me an opinion on why am I melting.” It didn’t take him too long to nail it.
“You’re in pain. And you’re grieving,” he said. Even as that was sinking in, he said there’s an upside to it. “How would you even know it was pain if you hadn’t known joy? The reason this hurts is because you fear losing joy. That’s not weakness. That’s the cost of being human.” Those lines have stayed with me. Once you hear it, you can’t unhear it. And when you think of it, none of us can escape the apprenticeship of pain. We don’t ask for it. But life drafts us into it anyway.
Pain shows up in different ways. A relationship that falls apart when you thought it was forever. A diagnosis you didn’t expect. A career setback that pulls the rug out from under you. A betrayal by someone you trusted. Then there are the smaller cuts: the insult at work; that teenager of yours who snaps back brutally; the numbers in the bank account which don’t match the effort you’ve put in.
There’s no certificate to be had at the end of this apprenticeship. But the lessons are forever.
I saw it with a friend who lost his job in a restructuring. He had always been a star performer, the kind of person who looked untouchable. But this time the ground caved in. He thought he was indispensable. Turned out, he wasn’t even necessary. That truth carried more weight than what he realised. And as it hit, the pain came in—uninvited, unvarnished—teaching him what years of success never had.
Pain is a blunt teacher. Unlike success, which flatters, or comforts, pain strips away illusions. It shows you what you can and cannot control. What is worth fighting for, and what you can let go. There are no shortcuts here. You can’t outsource grief. You can’t delegate heartbreak. You can’t automate humiliation. You have to sit with it. Endure it. Rage at it if you must. And, if you’re lucky, learn from it.
Think about it. The friend who values humility because she learned the hard way that titles don’t protect you. The man who is kinder because he knows what it feels like to be ignored. The parent who listens more closely because they remember what it was like not to be heard. The entrepreneur who counts every rupee because they once went broke. Pain wrote those lessons.
But not everyone learns. Some get stuck. They rehearse old wounds like a play on loop. They never move on. Pain can deform as much as it can instruct.
Which is why the point isn’t the pain itself, but how you deal with it. Do you allow yourself to feel it fully? Do you ask what it might be teaching you? Do you resist the urge to use it as an excuse for cruelty?
Closer home, I think of my own encounters. Deaths that left an ache no distraction could fill. Betrayals that showed how fragile trust can be. Failures that left me staring at the ceiling through the night. It felt unbearable then. Over time, it transformed. It stripped the arrogance. Slowed down the judgments.
Maybe that’s the point of pain. It isn’t a degree you earn. It’s not a workshop you leave.
There are no parties for heartbreak. No anniversaries for failure. But if you watch closely, you’ll see that people who have felt it, carry themselves with unusual grace. Their confidence is quieter, their compassion deeper, their humour edged with empathy. They’ve paid their dues.
And if Vivek is right, the way forward isn’t to resist it, but to welcome it. To salute pain. To accept it. To celebrate it. Because only then does it stop being a wound. It becomes the very thing that leads us to evolve into being fully human.
(Charles Assisi is co-founder of Founding Fuel. He can be reached on assisi@foundingfuel.com. The views expressed are personal)
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