Walking But Never Arriving

“I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering.” - Jensen Huang

Some people hear this and think: “Is he crazy? Why would you wish pain on others?” But when I look at my own brain, I realize: I am a living product of that wish. Not in the “cool like a billionaire CEO” sense, but in a very ordinary way: my brain has been trained by pain to the point where it only knows survival, not celebration.

My parents grew up from extreme hardship and poverty. They know what it means to have nothing, to struggle every day just to survive. And that spirit, the spirit of always being ready, always being defensive, never daring to let go was passed down from them to me. Not through direct teaching, but through how they lived, how they worried, how they looked at life. I grew up in a home where “enough” was never truly enough, and “safe” was always temporary. My brain was shaped in that environment. It learned that life is not for enjoying, but for getting through.

There have been clear “wins” in my life. Passing an exam I was sure I’d fail. Making it through a brutal interview. Completing a project the whole team thought was doomed. Being chosen, recognized, praised. Situations where, logically, I should feel very happy. But the actual emotion is something entirely different: no excitement, no urge to brag, no sense of elation. I just feel “got through it, lucky me, escaped.” It doesn’t feel like victory. It feels like dodging disaster.

I’ve realized my brain doesn’t measure happiness by the absolute value of outcomes. It measures by the distance between what happened and the worst-case scenario it had already imagined. If the result is worse than expected, there’s sadness and pain. If it’s better, the brain doesn’t “reward” accordingly, it just turns off the alarm: “Okay, not as bad as I feared. Good enough.” That’s relief, not happiness. And the longer you live in environments full of uncertainty, the more that habit of pre-scripting worst-case scenarios becomes a reflex.

In Jensen Huang’s spirit, “pain and suffering” is fuel to make people more resilient, creative, better under pressure. I don’t deny that. I think it’s true. But I also see a side few talk about: some people get over-trained. Pain stops being an occasional lesson that passes through and leaves; it becomes the source code of the nervous system. It creates a 24/7 defense system. This system helps me withstand many shocks, but each time I “win,” I don’t feel like I’ve climbed higher, I just feel like I haven’t fallen yet.

Every time I step into something difficult, important exams, interviews, suffocating project deadlines, speaking in front of crowds, thoughts automatically pop up: “If it doesn’t work out, whatever, I wasn’t expecting much,” “Failing is normal,” “It’s hard, so failing makes sense.” On the surface, this sounds very rational and mature, like “I’m being realistic.” But looking deeper, I understand it’s a self-protection mechanism. It lets me tell myself that if the outcome is bad, I’m mentally prepared; if it’s good, I just feel “lucky, didn’t fall into the worst scenario.” The problem is I get no emotional reward. I only get relief from the painful scenario I’d been living with in imagination all along.

The strange part is: the bad scenario gets “rehearsed” so much that if it actually happens, the brain is less shocked. But the good scenario barely gets rehearsed that way. So when something good happens, the brain doesn’t know how to be happy. It only knows one familiar operation: turn off the alarm and return to standby mode.

I think this is the consequence of a lesson inscribed in the subconscious through repetition: high hopes are dangerous, celebrating too early puts you in a vulnerable position. Each time I hoped too much and got crushed, the brain recorded “don’t fly too high again.” It lowers the ceiling of expectations, limits excitement, always keeps a safe distance from joy. This is an extremely smart mechanism if the ultimate goal is “don’t collapse.” But the cost is that joy gets cut off, and “victory” gradually transforms into something closer to… “avoiding defeat.”

From that point on, achievement no longer carries the color of “reward” for me. It carries the color of “survival.” A raise is no longer “I’m so good,” but “at least I won’t worry for a few more years.” Getting a good job offer is no longer “I got what I wanted,” but “less risk of unemployment.” A successful project is no longer “a milestone to be proud of,” but “didn’t burn, didn’t get yelled at, didn’t fail.” My brain links success with continued existence, not with joy. So it always keeps me in defensive mode, always ready to fight fires, always anticipating life’s next blow. No sense of “finished a chapter.” Only “made it through this gate, prepare for the next.”

Sometimes I think: maybe I should reward myself with something. Go somewhere fun, buy something I like, do something useless but enjoyable. That thought flickers, then gets crushed by another voice: “Waste money on something that creates nothing? Are you sure?” In my system, time, money, energy are like survival oxygen. Using oxygen to learn more, work, increase safety-that makes sense. Using oxygen “just for fun” is understood as a threat. It doesn’t ask “don’t you have spare capacity?” It only asks “how dare you use it?”

So even when objectively speaking there’s enough, I still live like someone in survival mode: “not dead yet, must continue.” “Moving forward” is no longer a free choice, but more like a survival reflex. I don’t feel like I’m choosing to keep going-it’s more like being pushed by an invisible force from behind: memories of when I collapsed, fear of returning to the starting point, and a nervous system that’s always vigilant, saying “don’t assume you’re safe.”

I don’t think Jensen is wrong. I just think this picture needs both sides. Pain truly is what forges people into formidable beings. But pain also shouldn’t be allowed to write the entire emotional operating system. It should teach endurance, create depth, help you be more realistic. And after that, there needs to be an opposite motion: relearn how to celebrate without delusion, relearn how to hope without being foolish, relearn how to stop not because you’re out of tasks but because you’ve done enough for this phase. Otherwise, we’ll live like machines optimized for “not dying,” and forget that humans aren’t just meant to hold on-they’re meant to feel alive.