There’s a chance conversation I had several years ago that keeps coming back to mind recently. The college rents space in the summer to a number of camps, which for a long time included a weight-loss camp. We used to see those campers sort of grudgingly shuffling through various activities in the Field House when we went there to play our regular pick-up basketball game.

One day while we were waiting for enough people to show up to get our game going, I remarked on the weight-loss campers to another player, a guy who, like me, has on more than one occasion lost tens of pounds only to find them again a few years later. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it was basically noting that they seemed to give up on whatever thing they were supposed to be doing really easily.

I do remember his reply, though, which was “The thing to keep in mind is that you and me, we’ve been in good shape, and we remember what that felt like. And we remember what it took to get there. So we know that it sucks, but the payoff is worth it. These kids have never been in shape in their lives, so they don’t really understand that it gets better on the other side.”

This came to mind most recently on a bike ride on Thursday, which has been my main form of exercise during the lockdown. Thursday’s route was the one that involves going up some very substantial hills, and I was congratulating myself for making it up the last and steepest of those with less down-shifting than usual. I was also sweating profusely and gasping for breath, and realized that that level of exertion probably seems like a weird thing to celebrate to the people whose houses I pass along that route (especially since there’s a longer but less steep route to the top of the same hill a few blocks away…).

But of course, the point is not just to get to the top of the hill, in which case I would’ve used more of the gears. The point is to be gasping and sweating at the top of that hill, because I know that gets me in better shape than I am now, and that’s worth the effort. And if I can do that hill with minimal downshifting, then I can ride some other, more interesting routes that involve going down big hills I’ll have to get back up to get home. But I only know that because I’ve been through the process before.

(Sadly, this is not the sort of hill where reaching the top means that you get to go down a big hill on the other side; such are the problems of living on high ground…)

I also thought of that conversation while out biking with The Pip, who decided out of the blue to learn to ride a bike in early March, just before the schools closed. I actually made a run to Target to get him the very last bike they had in stock in his size about a week after the state orders that shut most things down. This was well worth it, as it turns out…

We went out on a ride that required coming back up a bit of a hill, and I was urging him on to keep going and not stop pedalling and walk. When we got to the top, he grumpily asked “Why are we doing this?!?!”

And, you know, the answer is pretty much the same as why I go up the steep hill on one of my bike routes: because if you push yourself to do that, it will be easier later to do other things that are too hard right now. I want him to be able to easily bike up the fairly gentle hill he was complaining about so that later we can bike up a steeper hill with difficulty, which will become easier, and then we can start riding more interesting places. It’s sort of hard to explain that to an eight-year-old, though, for more or less the same reason it’s hard to explain to the weight-loss campers why they needed to do whatever it was that they were quitting on.

(To be fair to The Pip, he actually does have some idea of this, because he’s a persistent Little Dude, and will latch on to specific physical goals and doggedly pursue them. He actually asked for a pull-up bar to put in his room, which is now installed in the doorway to his room (at forehead height on me, in case you want proof of how much I love my son). And while he could barely hang on it when I first put it there, six or so months later, he’s done more honest chin-ups than I have in my entire life.)

I also think it’s a useful concept to keep in mind for teaching, through Rhett Allain’s great analogy about confusion as the sweat of learning. A lot of students struggling with problems are inclined to give up, because they don’t realize that the struggle is part of the point. And since they’ve never been good at solving those kinds of problems, they don’t see the benefit.

The trick with all these things is getting the person who needs to do the work to want to do the work. And the paradox of that is that it’s often easier to see the benefits of doing the hard thing after you’ve already been on the other side, and seen how things get better over there.