Pushing Through the Pain Cave

Jasmin Paris and how to triumph through adversity

Image: Jasmin Paris: outsideonline.com

Everybody knows the Friedrich Nietzsche quote, ‘What doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger.’

Appearing in one of his last great works, Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche’s point is that almost any suffering, whether physical or mental, can be character-building. If only we view suffering in the right way, Nietzsche thinks, we will build greater resilience and emerge stronger than before.

It’s a hugely potent idea – one that countless people have taken inspiration from without even knowing who coined the aphorism. 

The reason it appeals so widely is obvious: it’s a punchy formulation of a robustly optimistic approach to life. Former United States president Theodore Roosevelt, who shared this mindset, called it the ‘strenuous life.’ The highest successes, said Roosevelt, come “not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.” 

Here, Roosevelt and Nietzsche are very much in accord – despite the fact that Roosevelt was an adherent of Victorian ‘muscular’ Christianity, and Nietzsche was perhaps the most fervent opponent of Christianity there has ever been.

I can’t claim to better Nietzsche and Roosevelt’s power of insight or rhetorical gifts (who can?). I do, however, have some reservations about their advice and think that it can be fruitfully built on. 

Let’s see how.

The Tennessee woods

Image: Teddy Roosevelt, emersonkruwreilly.blogspot.com

The problem with Nietzsche’s aphorism is that – by necessity – it's very broad. In other words, what it gains in brevity, it loses in detail. This makes it extremely memorable but almost too general to easily apply to our lives. What does the right attitude to suffering actually look like? What areas of life does it best apply to? How do we measure strength?

By contrast, Roosevelt’s formulation is too demanding. After all, ‘splendid ultimate triumph’ is a pretty high bar to clear. What, we might ask, does triumph through adversity entail for those of us who aren’t legendary statesmen, military commanders, or explorers? (Roosevelt, genius that he was, managed to be all three.) 

So, even if Nietzsche and Roosevelt are roughly correct, we’re missing certain crucial details. For that reason, it helps to find concrete examples of triumph through adversity elsewhere. In principle, these could come from all walks of life and anywhere on the globe. One such person, though, is a vet and mother of two from Scotland named Jasmine Paris.

Paris has just become the first woman to complete the infamous Barkley Marathons. For anyone unfamiliar with it, the Barkley is perhaps the ultimate athletics challenge, involving a roughly 100-mile race through Frozen Head State Park in eastern Tennessee. 

Even getting to the start line of the Barkley is difficult, as the application process is shrouded in mystery. Those lucky enough to compete have to run five 20-mile laps of an unmarked route through Frozen Head, orienteering without GPS. What’s more, they have to finish in under 60 hours, meaning that much of it is done in the dark, and most competitors go without any sleep, suffering ordeals such as vomiting and hallucinations as a result. Most amazingly, the overall elevation gain of the Barkley is equivalent to ascending and descending Mount Everest – twice.

It goes without saying that the level of physical and mental fortitude required to complete the Barkley is at the upper limits of human ability. Since 1989, only 20 people have finished it in the 60-hour window: 19 men and now one woman, Jasmine Paris – who finished with just 99 seconds to go, collapsing past the finish line in a now-iconic photo.

The pain cave

Image: Finish line at the Barkley Marathon, 20minutos.es

Paris’ achievement is utterly remarkable – indeed, the Barkley Marathon’s co-founder, Lazarus Lake, previously claimed that it might be impossible for a woman to finish it. 

But complete it, she did. On one level, then, Paris exemplifies Roosevelt’s ideal of a “man [sic!] who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph”.

When we look a little further into Paris’ statements and person, however, we also discover some lessons that are applicable to all of us, regardless of whether we’re great athletes.

The first is how to actually persevere through suffering. The hardship of running any distance is physical, of course, but also mental: you’re convinced that you need to stop, that you can’t make it to the end of your planned route. This combination of physical exertion and mental self-doubt isn’t unique to running but applies in many domains: in fasting or religious observation, learning an instrument or craft, or even when caring for another person.

How then to cope with it? Paris’ answer is to conceive of the suffering as a pain cave and to find the motivation to endure by envisioning yourself delving further and further into the cave. The further you go into the cave, metaphorically speaking, the more you discover about your own inner strength and resilience. This self-understanding can then be taken out of the immediate context and applied to wider life, building self-esteem and confidence in one’s own abilities. 

Of course, Paris’ abilities to endure the pain cave far exceed most human beings’ – but each of us, within our own limits and in our preferred domains, can push ourselves further into it.

Finding balance

Image: Jasmin Paris and daughter, skysports.com

The second crucial insight we can take from Paris’ example is that triumphing through adversity doesn’t have to come at the expense of the rest of your life.

This is something that high-achievers and advocates of the strenuous life don’t always appreciate: both Roosevelt and Nietzsche, for example, both had difficult family relations. The former packed his sons off to boarding school and struggled with his famous tearaway daughter, Alice. As for Nietzsche, his increasingly isolated lifestyle in alpine Europe compounded the difficulties he had in maintaining good relations with others.

Part of what’s so inspiring about Jasmine Paris is that she is an amateur athlete, fitting her incredible hill running achievements around veterinary work and maternal obligations. More than this, though, the various parts of her life mutually reinforce one another. Running makes her a better mother, she says, as having a space to pursue a strenuous passion means returning to the domestic realm calmer and more self-assured – indeed, stronger, as Nietzsche would say. The reverse is true, too, as thinking of her children is apparently one of the main ways in which she sustains herself in the pain cave. 

What’s achieved, then, is a kind of personal integration, where triumph through adversity comes not at the expense of the remainder of her life but forms part of a greater whole.

Per Aspera

Clearly, the above doesn’t refute Nietzsche’s dictum – in fact, I think it only reinforces it. I also hope that it offers a version of Roosevelt’s strenuous life for those of us who seek self-improvement and not necessarily absolute greatness. 

Even though Paris has achieved precisely that in her field, the lessons we can draw from her example apply to all of us: persevere by envisioning pain as a physical space and, in doing so, taking some kind of control over what you're feeling. Take that calm and inner fortitude back to the remainder of your life. Allow the pursuit of triumph through adversity to reinforce your life’s holistic balance rather than undermine it.

Perhaps you observe Yom Kippur or Ramadan, practice a martial art, or just grapple with four children and a dog while doing the weekly food shop. Whatever challenges we pursue in life that take a toll on us—physically, mentally, emotionally—can serve to build our character. Nietzsche and Roosevelt were right about that, and Jasmine Paris can show us how to get there.