Tags
anxiety, depression, fulfillment, happiness, red pill, strength, struggle
A customer of mine, who is also a psychologist, and I were shooting the breeze the other day and he brought up an interesting thought: that people need struggle in their lives.
Now one would think just the opposite, that a life free of struggles would lead to happiness and contentment. But apparently not.
Not so long ago, say 150 years, life itself provided plenty enough struggle just via day to day living and survival. Most men and women spent their days toiling for survival via planting crops, tending crops, raising animals, running small businesses, doing physical housework, and the like. The need to struggle was largely fulfilled with physical struggle, hard work.
After an industrial and urban way of life largely replaces a subsistence one, there was still struggle as many jobs were still physical. People were largely involved in working in factories, building and manufacturing goods. It was a different kind of struggle than living on a farm, but still plenty strenuous.
In a post industrial world the need for physical struggle to survive day to day has been greatly reduced thanks to modern conveniences such as electricity and plumbing and a variety of labor saving devices that depend on them. Many jobs also replaced physical struggle with a more sedentary day.
Without the need to struggle physically, rather than feel content and happy, people started to struggle emotionally. Literally creating problems for themselves and others when not distracted by true physical struggle to survive.
It’s an interesting idea to ponder, what one might be doing in their own life to fulfill the human need for struggle. Perhaps replacing that with some form of physical struggle via exercise, sports, active hobbies, and the like would actually lead to contentment and happiness far better than trying to eliminate all struggle?
One example of this might explain why studies found people who walk 15 minutes a day (physical struggle) can gain as much relief from depression as those who take antidepressants. The physical exertion literally creates serotonin, eliminating the need for it to be supplemented.
What do you think? Can you name examples of ways people struggle today? Either self created or not? Can you think of ways people might replace non-productive, self created struggle with productive struggle?
Notes From a Red Pill Girl 
Idle hands, etc., etc. Generally speaking, men like to master a challenge while women need to be kept busy. Neither one does well when life gets too easy. I’m bored at lot at work, because there’s just too many people in our department. Some of these people can barely do their jobs/do a lousy job. I could do the work of almost any 4-5 of them, but our dept heads don’t want to lose any FTEs. This causes some anxiety on my part. I can’t get any significant projects approved that have moderate costs associated because of “labor” overhead is so high.
“‘The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they seemed to become with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for them, perhaps, it was easier for them to see that something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle’s eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn. Well, they were going to destroy it again, were they ‘ this garden Earth, civilized and knowing, to be torn apart again that man might hope again in wretched darkness.”
–Walter Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
Your friend said a lot. Fifteen minutes of walking equal to taking antidepressants? That is something. Another thought, when people do not have enough problems in their own lives, they create problems for others.
is it that we *find* struggle … or that life *is* a struggle?
U set goals and work towards them, no need for problems or drama then.