There are some song titles that make you stop and think, “Well… that sounds terrible.” 😂 “Wish You Pain” is one of them.
But then you listen.
Been here before and I just wanna see you grow
Want you to grow
’Cause everything that matters most
That’s where it goes by a different name
I know that it might sound strange
But I wish you pain
The video makes the meaning even clearer. It centers on real people and real painful experiences, but it doesn’t stop with what happened to them. It also asks what came from those experiences. What changed? What grew? What did they learn?
Now Playing
Song: “Wish You Pain”
Artist: Andy Grammer
Watch, then come back.
Pain was part of the story. It just wasn’t necessarily the end of it. I’ve said for years that life is a series of lessons and blessings. Sometimes we know immediately which one we’ve been handed. Sometimes it takes years. And sometimes the lesson and the blessing are tangled together so tightly that there isn’t any honest way to separate them.
Here’s the thing, though – painful experiences don’t only bring pain with them. They can also bring out parts of us that we’d rather not look at. Jealousy. Resentment. Bitterness. Anger. Envy. Selfishness. Judgment. The desire to prove somebody wrong. The satisfaction of watching someone who hurt us finally fall flat on their face. (Side note: There’s a lovely German word for that last one: schadenfreude. You’re welcome for the extra bit of education there! 😁)
These are the things we tend to shove into the shadows. Being hurt is one thing. We can usually admit that. But admitting, “I am so jealous of her right now”? Or, “Part of me really wanted him to fail”? Or even, “I resent doing this for someone I love”? Those can be harder. Because now we’re not only dealing with what happened to us. We’re dealing with what it seems to say about who we are.
So sometimes we bury the reaction before we ever really look at it.
I’m not jealous.
I shouldn’t feel angry.
That’s selfish.
A good person wouldn’t think that.
Maybe that’s where something important gets lost.
The point isn’t to pretend the ugly feelings are beautiful. It’s to look at them long enough to find out whether they’re carrying something we need to know.
Maybe jealousy is still jealousy. But if we stop being ashamed of it long enough to get curious, perhaps it tells us: I want something I haven’t admitted I want.
Maybe resentment isn’t suddenly a virtue. But perhaps underneath it is: I’ve been giving more than I can keep giving. Or: I’ve been saying yes when I wanted to say no.
Maybe anger really did get ugly. But beneath it there might still be hurt, fear, a violated boundary, or something that felt profoundly unfair.
Maybe that moment of satisfaction when someone else failed isn’t our finest moment. But why did their failure feel so satisfying? What nerve did it touch? What old hurt was keeping score? What did we think their failure would finally prove?
That doesn’t mean every uncomfortable emotion contains some hidden pearl of wisdom. Sometimes we actually are just being petty. Sometimes we really are acting unfairly. There are times we do behave badly and we need to own it.
Curiosity isn’t an acquittal. It’s an investigation.
What I’m saying is if we immediately condemn whatever we find, we may never understand it well enough to change it.
There’s another danger in all that too. We can get so consumed by the pain, anger, resentment, jealousy or bitterness that they become the entire story. Then whatever the experience might eventually teach us gets swallowed up by the very feelings that arose from it.
Maybe that’s part of what Andy Grammer means when he sings: “That’s where it goes by a different name.”
The thing that begins as pain may eventually go by experience.
The failure may eventually go by redirection.
The heartbreak may eventually go by clarity.
The jealousy may expose desire.
The resentment may expose imbalance.
The anger may reveal a boundary.
The thing we thought proved something terrible about us may turn out to be pointing toward something we hadn’t been willing to see.
Not because pain is secretly wonderful. Not because every terrible experience needs a silver lining tied around it. And certainly not because every ugly reaction should be excused. But because sometimes life hands us lessons disguised as things we never would have chosen. Sometimes it hands us blessings we don’t recognize until much later. And sometimes, irritatingly enough, it hands us both in the same package.
Making peace with the parts of ourselves we keep in the shadows doesn’t necessarily mean learning to love everything we find there. It may simply mean being willing to turn on the light and ask: What is this really? Why is it here? What is it trying to tell me?
And perhaps, once we’ve looked closely enough, we’ll discover that the first name we gave it really wasn’t the whole story.
Look Again
What feeling or reaction in yourself have you been quick to condemn? If you looked at it with curiosity instead of shame, what might it be trying to tell you?
