The Price of Motivation

Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

I visited the bookstore yesterday - a very dangerous exercise for me, as I am reminded of how many books there are, and how many of them I want to read (all of them), and my reading speed just isn't up to the task. I need to be more content with dabbling, but it's hard for me to be content with reading just a few books. (I did end up reading Brian McLaren's The Secret Message of Jesus, so I can now authoritative talk about my perceptions rather than passing along assorted rumors. (For anyone who cares, McLaren is a "big name" figure in the "Emerging Church" movement.)

Frequently when I visit bookstores, I'm stunned by the self-help section. It's huge. Apparently we need lots of help. But I also find myself wondering about what motivates me to change. Generally my current lifestyle is, more or less, comfortable. If there were easy, safe, clear options for improving it, I'd make them in a flash. But most change is hard, uncertain, tentative. At a minimum, it's the devil we know (now) verses the devil we don't - who might be a lot bigger, scarier, and more frightening. So what motivates me to change?

Pain: Duh. At some point, I simply decide that change can't be any worse than the current situation, and, being a somewhat rational creature, I gravitate toward the option that might lead to pain reduction.

I wonder how much of my change can be categorized in those terms. The pain of a guilty conscience verses the pain of paying my taxes. The pain of grieving God verses the pain of being scorned by one's friends. (Hrm, I begin to sound like my evolutionary biologist friends.)

The more whimsical mathematical part of me now wants to define joy = (alpha/pain) where alpha is constant, and then all change can be expressed as a function of pain.

I don't entirely like the simplification, but it makes for great character questions...

How much relational conflict is honesty worth to me?
How much contempt from others is pursuing God worth?
Is it worth sacrificially caring for people who scorn and reject me?
How much loneliness is holiness worth?
Is the level of pain the basis for leaving a church or getting a divorce?