It is true that pain can destroy a person's dreams and goals, but it can also drive you to achieve things you never could before. This is highlighted in the stories of people at war, people in plane and car disasters, etc., where the chaos and pain were so great that some gave up, others found more strength than they ever had in their lives, managing to survive the most extreme scenarios that when you hear them, you cannot explain how, how they managed to do it!
It is interesting how the same kinds of events can evoke such different reactions from people. For instance, there were apparently two types of people who came out of the Nazi concentration camps - Victims and Survivors. The survivors had better lives than the victims on average.