Good Values Start with Good Problems

If we live our lives in constant avoidance of pain, we will lead very empty and meaningless lives. This may seem to contradict what I’ve said many times, that Stoicism should help us avoid negative emotions and thus pain. The important word, missing in the previous sentence, is unnecessary.

Stoicism’s goal is to help to remove unnecessary negative emotions and save you from unnecessary suffering and pain.

There is a difference between suffering and struggling. Even if you don’t know the difference between the two, innately you know these two words, though almost interchangeable, have a different meaning. A dictionary defines struggle as “to make strenuous or violent efforts in the face of difficulties or opposition.” Dictionaries equate suffering to pain (experience of unpleasantness). I view struggle as suffering with a purpose. The purpose provides you with the why. Why is the fuel that makes you overcome the pain.

Things that are worthy, the ones that have the why, usually come with some amount of pain: writing, kids, marathon running, dating, investing. You cannot have a good workout and not experience pain. This pain is not needless, but necessary. Once you figure out why you are doing something and that why is important to you, then suffering turns into struggle and thus becomes more tolerable. Or as my son Jonah’s favorite artist, J. Cole, said, “There is beauty in the struggle, ugliness in the success.” Our favorite Roman emperor, Marcus, agrees with J. Cole and takes it a step further: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

Overcoming obstacles creates, as Mark Manson puts it, “a sense of meaning and importance” in our lives, and as a bonus it brings happiness. In the long run, the things we struggle for are the ones that have the most meaning in our lives.

If you avoid problems, then you are destined for an empty, sad existence. Happiness in life comes from having and solving good problems! Viktor Frankl goes beyond that to state: “Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to be happy.” And thus, we should be on the search for good problems. Paradoxically, if we embed this attitude deep into our operating system and embrace the happiness that comes from solving good problems, then we won’t look at life’s many obstacles so much as problems but rather as sources of happiness.

As Seneca said, “Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”

I have a close friend. He is in his early 40s, single, smart, kind – a terrific human being. He moved to the West Coast a decade ago, so I see him in Denver only once a year, in December. Over the years he has struggled with his weight. Last year he hit his personal absolute worst – 360 pounds. As we went out to dinner, I asked him when he was going to start dating again. (Yes, we have that close a relationship.) He said once he lost weight.

Fast-forward a year, and I am having dinner with literally half of my last year’s friend – he has lost half of his body weight and now tips the scales at 180 pounds (true story). I asked him the same question: When are you going to start dating? I was secretly hoping that he had already signed up with every dating website available. To my surprise, he started listing all the inconveniences and frustrations that come with dating – going on dates, texting before and after dates, rejection, keeping his house constantly clean, etc.

I responded by quoting Freud: “One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”

I’ll let Epictetus have the last word here: “All human beings seek the happy life, but many confuse the means – for example, wealth and status – with that life itself. This misguided focus on the means to a good life makes people get further from the happy life. The really worthwhile things are the virtuous activities that make up the happy life, not the external means that may seem to produce it.”

Mark wrote a fantastic book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. If you can overcome the “F” word, I highly recommend it. A lot of content here has been influenced by Mark’s book.