By: Hafiz Muhammad Idrees Butt
The human mind is built to avoid pain. It saves energy, seeks comfort, and chooses the path that promises the quickest reward. This instinct helps us survive, but it quietly works against us when the task is learning. Real understanding demands effort. It requires staying in moments of uncertainty where the brain must build new connections and endure the discomfort of not knowing.
When I saw my students struggle, I realised they were not being lazy. They were simply human. We rarely suffer unless we see a visible benefit ahead. Many of the real rewards of learning are hidden behind time. You cannot show a ten-year-old what it feels like to solve hard problems as an adult. The benefit is invisible, and so the motivation weakens.
That invisibility creates a great challenge for any teacher. How do you make a child choose thinking over comfort? How do you make them push through struggle when every part of their being is asking for ease?
The only way is to make meaning visible, to help them see that every effort carries value. That takes imagination, patience, and empathy. Every child carries natural curiosity, but curiosity alone is fragile. It needs structure, challenge, and trust to survive. The teacher’s task is to protect that spark from being replaced by the false pleasure of shortcuts.
Even then, there are no guarantees. Sometimes, the right understanding arrives months later in another class or in a quiet moment at home. Yet the effort must still be made, because the alternative is disengagement, and disengagement is the death of curiosity.
When we fail to solve this problem, we take the easy way out. We simplify the subject, skip the hard parts, or teach tricks that get the answer but hide the logic. We call this efficiency, but it slowly teaches students that understanding is optional. They begin to believe that the goal is to get the result, not to understand the process.
Part of this attitude lies in how we design our classrooms. The race to cover the syllabus and show visible progress makes deep learning look like a luxury. The teacher feels pressed for time. The student senses that speed matters more than clarity. Both adjust to survive the system. But every time we rush through a difficult concept to save time, we quietly build a foundation of confusion that will cost far more time later.
As teachers, parents, and learners, we must learn to see the long view again. The short term may bring results, but the long term builds understanding. Only through understanding does effort become joy, and struggle become light.
The same logic appears in life. We know using a mobile phone while driving is dangerous, yet we keep doing it. We know smoking harms us, yet we postpone quitting because the damage feels far away. We know a healthy routine matters, yet we trade it for a few extra minutes of sleep. We are built to prioritise the short term. The mind always chooses the smaller, visible comfort over the distant, invisible benefit.
The classroom is no different. Students prefer the small comfort of quick answers over the hidden reward of understanding deeply. The pattern repeats, the habit strengthens, and by the time they reach higher grades, many believe that understanding is optional as long as results look fine.
This mindset is not entirely their fault. Adults behave the same way in workplaces, families, and even in spiritual life. We prefer instant gratification, checklists over contemplation, tools over thinking, and visible outcomes over invisible growth. The same instinct that stops a child from grappling with a hard problem is what stops many grown-ups from reflecting deeply on their own choices. The pattern is human, not academic.
It is also spiritual. The very words Dunya and Akhirah capture this truth. Dunya literally means what is near and immediate. It is also referred to in the Quran as al-Aajila (the hasty or short term). Akhirah means that which comes later, long term and hidden from sight yet promised to those who see with understanding. The entire concept of faith rests on this contrast. To believe is to prefer what is lasting over what is temporary, what is unseen over what is visible.
The Quran reminds us of this when it says: Whoever desires the harvest of the Hereafter, We increase for him his harvest, and whoever desires the harvest of this world, We give him thereof, but he has no share in the Hereafter— Ash-Shura, 42:20.
Faith, in its purest sense, is a training of perspective. It teaches us to look beyond what is immediate and to trust what is coming. The same principle that defines religious maturity also defines intellectual maturity. A believer chooses patience over haste, reflection over reaction, and meaning over momentary relief.
If only we allowed this belief to shape our thinking in everyday life, our entire approach to learning and teaching would change. The classroom would no longer be about quick results or visible scores. It would become a place where the unseen reward of understanding matters more than the visible grade on a paper.
When I think about it, the pattern of Dunya and Akhirah is the same pattern that governs learning. The effort of today is often unrewarded until later. The reward of clarity, the quiet confidence that comes from true understanding, belongs to those who were willing to stay with difficulty long enough for it to turn into meaning. This is how the mind matures.
Mathematics and language should be the gymnasiums of the mind. They train reasoning, patience, and structured thought. But we have treated them as subjects to be covered rather than spaces to think about. Early education should build the ability to handle complexity. Once that skill is strong, every other subject becomes lighter.
The irony is that we measure education in years, not in depth. We celebrate completion rather than comprehension. We value speed more than stillness. But learning is not a race. It is a conversation with meaning, and like all deep conversations, it takes time to unfold.
The problem is not the difficulty itself. The problem is our relationship with it. Difficulty is not an enemy; it is an invitation. A child who learns to find satisfaction in a solved problem will carry that courage for life. That child needs a teacher who is patient enough to reveal the beauty hiding inside the struggle.
When I began to see this clearly, my frustration with struggling students turned into compassion. Their hesitation was not laziness. It was the natural fear of effort that does not yet promise reward. My job was not to remove the difficulty but to make the meaning shine through it.
What we often call difficulty is simply a lack of visible meaning. Once meaning becomes clear, even the hardest task becomes manageable. The mind resists what it cannot connect, but once the connection appears, effort feels natural. That is the secret of sustained learning, not less effort, but effort guided by purpose.
As teachers, parents, and learners, we must learn to see the long view again. The short term may bring results, but the long term builds understanding. Only through understanding does effort become joy, and struggle become light.
The writer is a tech entrepreneur, and teaches out of passion.
