Why People Thrive on Frustration

By Jay Nair

The Mask was a whirling dervish wrapped in an eye-catching yellow suit and grotesquely featured green face, whose outrageous quirks were played for laughs for its target audience of primary school children. But it was also our first exposure to how our frustrations with the situations we find ourselves in can be mitigated or released. Of course, an ancient magical mask that transforms us into powerful and warped representations of our personalities is not readily available. And so we have to improvise a little. While raging against a system that is perceived to repress and restrict people through acts of destruction is not an ideal first response, some people feel that there are no other ways to express their feelings and bitterness. Others try to escape these feelings of being overwhelmed, worthless, and inadequate through drug use – legal and otherwise.

But there are plenty of examples of people harnessing their less-than-ideal circumstances and how they perceive themselves as powerful motivations and achieving considerable success. Baroness Emmuska Orczy was reputedly inspired to write “The Scarlet Pimpernel” after being annoyed with another author’s book and felt that she could write a much better story. Mary Shelly, not wanting to lose a competition among her circle of friends, wrote “Frankenstein” after experiencing a vivid dream. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was driven by a saying from his childhood “If you’ve ever been hungry, you’ll never be full”. George Soros, who escaped the Nazi occupation of Hungary and emigrated to the United States, became so successful that he once bankrupted the Bank of England. Zyzz, the recently deceased aesthetic fanatic, turned himself from an extremely skinny teenager into a heavily muscled and sculpted young man after hating how others always commented on his extremely lean physique and how he himself felt about his body.

One only needs to look at the multitude of athletes from impoverished backgrounds that have pushed past adversity and hardship to succeed, to see another example of how a disadvantageous background can provide the fuel for achievement. Among the many stars of the Brazilian football team, Kaka is one of the only players to come from a middle class family. Whereas Ronaldo (the original one) could not attend the youth academy of Flamengo because he could not afford the bus fare, Kaka was driven to the youth academy of Sao Paolo everyday by his father. It is arguable who the better footballer is but there does no doubt who had a lot more obstacles in his way. Most players who come through the youth academies of South America are driven by the singular desire to pull themselves and their families out of poverty and this gives them more than sufficient motivation to hone their prodigious talent into a marketable skill. But a low socio-economic status is not always a motivating factor.

Minorities who face discrimination on a regular basis often find that they are valued for their sporting achievements and latch on to athletics as a way of reassuring themselves and reminding others that they are important and wanted. We wonder at the antics of Mario Balotelli but sometimes we disregard the difficult childhood that he had growing up as a visibly and markedly different person in homogenous Italy. Despite being fostered by a well-to-do family, Balotelli has experienced severe racism both on and off the pitch and explained his surprising behaviours very eloquently – “I suffer with racism everyday. I am the first black to wear Italian shirt. I’m not angry, but my life experiences make me act differently from other people. Then, try to learn more about me before you criticize me.”

Perhaps sport provides him with a cathartic outlet for his disappointment; with every goal proving people that do not value him wrong for disregarding him. Without intending to cover myself in angst or compare myself to Balotelli, I have my share of dissatisfaction and resentment that I alleviate with football. Every week I participate in as many training sessions as I can manage, even with teams far above my division. Every match I feel that I have to prove myself and make some meaningful mark on the game. Every time I score I never feel nor express joy, wonder or relief. I don’t celebrate as much as give voice to my anger and frustration but I do feel less of both.

Hate, discouragement, unfulfilment, disappointment, frustration, anxiety and dissatisfaction are mandatory in life, but sufferance is optional. So many people, now and in history, have harnessed these as powerful tools to improve their situation and achieve far beyond what they think and other tell them they should be capable of. I’d like to think that everyone else can do this too.