No Pain, No Gain
 
By Hyon O'Brien

``No pain, no gain" is a motto that actress Jane Fonda made famous in the series of aerobic workout videos she began producing in 1982.

The point she was making to the exercising public was that without experiencing muscle ache and exhaustion, it was impossible to succeed in getting the desired muscle tone and shape that is the goal of bodybuilding. That discomfort was the necessary part in gaining a desirable physical condition.

The idea is not a new one. There is an allusion to ``no pain, no gain" in Robert Herrick's poem from around 1650: ``If little labor, little are our gains, man's fortunes are according to his pains." The same point was later made by Benjamin Franklin in 1733 in his Poor Richard's Almanac: ``There are no gains without pains".

Over the years, this expression has been adopted in many areas, implying that the road to achievement contains a series of unavoidable hardships and endurance tests.

Let me offer some examples.

Most recently, some of my friends and I were caught in the fever of watching the weekly Korean TV drama ``Beethoven Virus." It ran for 18 episodes and ended abruptly in early November, much to the disappointment of its large audience (the drama was a huge success, drawing 22 percent of all viewers).

This story of a musically brilliant conductor with non-existent people skills and his interaction with his orchestra against a backdrop of classical music particularly focusing on the works of Beethoven offered a refreshing change from run of the mill melodramas about family relationships that seem to permeate Korean TV.

Kim Myung-min, the actor who portrayed the irascible Maestro Kang, or ``Kang Mae," reportedly spent five full months learning how to conduct from a musical director in order to add authenticity to his role in the series. This illustrates ``no pain, no gain" beautifully. I wonder whether Kim's performance would have been as successful as it was if he didn't go through the pain of learning how to conduct from a real professional.

Yours truly would not be as overweight as I have become if I could better endure the pain (yes, pain) of eating less food instead of indulging. Many people, especially young children in Seoul, are overweight and they too, seem to have my weakness.

My best friend, In-sook, loves gardening. Last Spring, I enjoyed her tulips and daffodils, which were in full bloom amid rocks and trees in her backyard. I know we wouldn't have been enjoying the radiant glory of the flowers if she and her family hadn't gone through all the pain of planting hundreds of bulbs the previous year. She also plants lots of vegetables. I know her hours of labor have benefited many friends with fresh organic food for their tables. ``No pain, no gain'' indeed.

Another friend, Park Shin-ja, is an inductee into the Woman's Basketball Hall of Fame, which opened in 1999 in Knoxville, Tennessee. For 12 years from 1956 to 1968 until her retirement, she reigned as the most outstanding woman basketball player in Asia and was voted Most Valuable Player in 1967 when she led the Korean team to finish second to the Soviet Union in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in the 5th FIBA World Championships. One can imagine the countless painful hours of hard training and practice she must have put in to reach that pinnacle of performance! But what a glorious gain it was for her and Korea!

Recently our book club read ``Dreams From My Father" by Barack Obama, the President-elect of the United States. It was hard to believe that this mature, biographical account was written by a mere 33 year-old. In the book, he relates stories about his time in Indonesia and one aspect particularly impacted me; every single morning his mother would wake him up at 4 a.m. to teach him from textbooks she had acquired for international home schooling. For three grueling hours, they'd wrestle. This continued for four years until he was shipped off to Hawaii, where his grandparents lived, in order to continue his education on American soil. When the six-year-old Obama grumbled, his mother would rebuke him, saying, ``This is not a picnic for me either, Buster."
His mother could not afford high tuition at an international school in Jakarta but nevertheless wanted to provide her son with a quality education and doing it in the early hours with educational material from the States was her only alternative.

I can't help but admire the discipline and determination of Obama's mother. She desired the best for her son and was willing to lose sleep to make something great happen in her son's early education. The foundation was laid with much painstaking effort and Obama gained so much from it.

Korea would not be where it is now financially if it hadn't courageously gone through the years of tough denial. There were many years people not allowed to travel abroad except for governmental trips when Korea simply did not have enough dollars. Lean years of saving collectively and enduring have brought about national gain and prosperity.

We are now facing another painful financial period, although it may take a different form, but I am certain that with the same unity and fortitude of mind, we will ride out the economic downturn and move forward to a more hopeful future.

So we wait for the gainful tomorrow while patiently undergoing the painful roller coaster ride of market correction. There will be light at the end of the dark tunnel.

Hyon O' Brien, a former reference librarian in the U.S., has returned to Korea after 32 years of living abroad. She can be reached at hyonobrien@gmail.com.