Boomer who refused knee pads got me thinking...

Years ago, I rented a room in a house. The landlord/owner was a boomer who lived there. Every once in a while, not too often, she would get on her knees and scrub the floor. Whenever she did that, I could see that she was in visible pain, so I suggested her to wear some knee pads and she told me that if she didn’t feel some degree of pain, then it meant that the floor wasn’t going to be squeaky clean. Imagine how stupid you must be. That’s a non sequitur. Like how the fuck getting on your knees and being overly theatrical and feeling knee pain ensure a clean floor?

What this lady told me had me thinking. The whole myth no pain no gain is bullshit. I’ve noticed that boomers romanticize pain and believe that if something is painful, then it must be beneficial and effective.

I had a boomer coach in high school who told us to push ourselves and ignore the pain and that we were supposed to feel excruciating pain. And the more pain we felt during the training sessions, the better. A lot of us ended up with all sorts of injuries.

My boomer neighbor told me that he declines the dental block whenever he goes to the dentist because if he doesn’t feel pain, it means the treatment is not working. And that pain builds character. Similarly, a boomer lady at a med spa did a microneedling session on me and it was very painful even with the numbing cream. But she was convinced that if you skip the numbing cream and you feel a lot of pain, the treatment will be more effective.

My parents were opposed to buying a robot vacuum because they think you need elbow grease and physical discomfort to make sure the house is clean. Thank God I didn’t listen to them. That robot vacuum was a great investment.

Or boomers who refuse to wear sunscreen because the sun is natural and a sunburn strengthens your immune system and you should just toughen up.

And don’t get me started on remote work. Most boomers want us to sit our asses for 2 hours in traffic just to go to the stupid office because they think that if you work remotely, you’re not working. They just love complicating things. If there’s a less painful way to do things, they assume it’s not as effective as the painful alternative. 

I have so many more examples of this cognitive distortion. This belief is so ingrained in us that even I made this mistake of subconsciously assuming that whatever activity I engaged into, either cleaning the house or working out, must have some level of pain otherwise I was cheating.