this is skronking my brain right now

“These findings do not mean that people enjoy painful experiences, such as filling out their income-tax forms, or that people enjoy things because they are associated with pain. What they do show is that if a person voluntarily goes through a difficult or a painful experience in order to attain some goal or object, that goal or object becomes more attractive.” – Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson from their book Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/10/05/the-benjamin-franklin-effect/#more-1459

I don't disagree with this at all but the implication is kind of shitty: Did I legit enjoy going to L'Anse aux Meadow for example, or are my memories of fun times simply post-facto justifications to explain to myself why I exerted so much time, effort and money to see the remnants of a place vikings might have lived once? Because let's recall that trip wasn't all non-stop fun and sun - I spent a lot of it rattling around inside my own head and generally being neurotic and introverted. But when I look back that's not what I think of first. Do I remember having a good time because I indeed had a good time or because I *need* to have had a good time to justify the trip? Ditto the Nashville trip. Remember the bad parts of that trip? If you did, and on regular basis, how would you even function around dad? This is bothering me. I see no benefit on dwelling on shitty episodes of my life, but as a person with a B.A in history, I don't particularly like the idea of eliding or revising my own personal history to reflect some made-up, up-tempo narrative.

(Now putting on my heritage management hat, is there anyway to effectively use this phenomenon? What it comes down to is that people generally enjoy things that they have to work hard for, otherwise why did they work so hard for it? The means justifies the ends? It's a vicious cycle that somebody should monetize, asap)

(P.P.S for the record school is going really well and I should write more about it for posterity, but we'll see how future me feels about that)