I believe that pain in life is inevitable. You might say, “well, duh,” but I think that some people, like myself as a teenager, have a hard time understanding this. As a result, I often times find myself running away from stress and problems, and living Bob Marley’s mantra: “don’t worry about a thing.” In this Rasta-rebellion of avoiding work, I find that I experience just as much and sometimes more pain than if I had done the work in the first place. How can this be? As I ignore tasks as if they’ll magically disappear, they continue loom over me like a spotlight illuminating a criminal. The stress becomes unbearable. I’ve come to the realization that although Marley’s music consoles and makes me happy, there comes a time when work needs to get done, and the reggae music has to be turned off. Understanding that a challenge is going to be difficult and maybe painful is the first step to overcoming it, head on.

In life, we all know that there are tasks, small and large, that need to be completed. If you don’t get your work done, you’re fired. End of story. But at this juncture in my life, I haven’t been able to consistently get my work done, despite bad grades and phone calls to my mom. The problem, I think, is not that I don’t have what it takes to get things done; rather it’s because of I avoid and am sometimes scared of the pain of homework. Procrastination, which is just one way to avoid pain, has become kind of a deeply rooted habit for me in school. The narrative is pretty similar in my classes: I don’t want to do the work because it will be too painful, so I avoid the problem and try to forget about my responsibilities. I then find that instead of enjoying my day like the rest of my classmates, I am both mad at myself and embarrassed in front of my teachers for not doing the work. And oh yeah, I still have to do the assignment.

Some people may say that you can choose not to feel pain and everything will still be all right. This way of thinking is actually quite true, and will last as long as you have zero responsibilities and goals in life.

Even those of us that choose to procrastinate know that the solution to the avoidance of pain is simple, yet too often we choose to make doing work bigger than it needs to be. If we can accept that we are going to feel at least some pain, no matter what, we can then make choices that don’t consider the pain involved. We will choose the path based on the potential outcome, and direct our pain toward goals and success.

I usually try to ignore the deficiency between test scores and grades and sometimes make excuses for why I don’t get my work done. After three long years of feeling pain wasn’t directed toward a goal, though, I feel as if an opportunity has been wasted. There isn’t a magic formula for doing well in school or in life, for that matter. It comes down to understanding that pain is everywhere, and avoiding work doesn’t work. For me, wasted ability is both sad and frustrating because of what could’ve been, which is one phrase I will make sure doesn’t describe my life.