No pain NO gain

No pain NO gain

September 30, 2012

By: Gina Yoryet Román

The first thing I did this morning was call my sister, TRJ as she celebrated another year of life. Despite being grown women now, we probably have more than fifty years left to enjoy living and reminisce all the fond memories of our childhood.

Throughout our journey TR6 has taught me many important lessons. One of them is to give oneself up and look after one’s family as we do not belong to ourselves. Our body is our greatest ownership and it’s hard to let go but we can accomplish it just like she did the minute she exchanged vows twelve years ago.

Every sacrifice has to hurt (not necessarily physically or mentally) but somehow because we have to give up things we may be too attached to.

This made me reflect about the meaning of sacrifice which applies to every scenario in life. For example, when we learn to walk, we may bump into a few things here and there bruising ourselves, when we learn to ride a bike, we may run into walls or other impending obstacles, when we learn to drive, we may hit another vehicle, when we learn a new language, it takes time, money, effort and energy, when we are in a committed relationship we have to willing to give our best and put a great part of our effort, time and energy to make it worthwhile, when we are in physical pain, we have to be willing to pay the price to take the road to recovery, when we are heart broken, we have to allow our heart to heal, when we want to have a pet, not only do we have to give it love but we have to dedicate time to it, when we want to be successful, we have to invest our time, money and energy for a few years until our effort pays off, when we want to have a lifetime friendship, we have to put time into it, when we as women want to give life to another human being, we have to sacrifice our bodies momentarily, when we want to be in shape, we have to discipline our most powerful muscle; our mind, when we want to travel or buy something, we have to work to acquire

those rewards.

Sometimes we may want to take the easiest route but if it doesn’t hurt, it is not sacrifice, and if there’s no pain, there will be no gain. I am not talking financial gain. Perhaps that gain could be more knowledge, love, wisdom, or many positive things. 

Like French Artist Simon Beck who can no longer run properly due to problems with his feet and painting is the least painful way of getting exercise. For the sake of exercise he found the beauty he could create in other ways.

In spite of the pain of sacrifice, amidst his affliction he was able to find the gift God gave him.

When I go through moments of frustration like I have the last couple of weeks, I think of the sacrifice, therefore, if there’s no pain, there won't be any gain.