Everything Feels Easy and Nothing Feels Satisfying

In last week’s post, I hinted to the fact that motherhood is hard. I talked about how motherhood is demanding and personally that’s part of what makes it rewarding to me. I’ve found in life many of the harder things make me feel more fulfilled than the easy things.

And then my life said…wait hold my beer.

Anyone else notice in motherhood the minute you say something out loud it decides to become false? Like, you mention that the baby is finally sleeping through the night to a friend and that very evening they’ll start waking 3 times a night? Or you mention how no one has had the stomach bug lately and BAM, Norovirus goes through your house? I think I did that to myself with the statement about things being hard because it was a hard week. My youngest (20 months) decided to start waking up at 5am PISSED. My third (3 yrs) has been having 2am bad dreams and then I can’t seem to fall back asleep. It’s the last week of school for my oldest (7 yrs) and so of course it’s class parties and thank you notes to teachers. And my 2nd (5 years) has a random two weeks off before camp starts. And on top of it all we planned a big get together at our house, a day trip to New York City, and threw in few playdates. Let’s just say I’m running on fumes.

And yea, it’s hard. I mean, I can’t keep going like this for too much longer or I’ll burn out. I’m not trying to glorify the grind. I’m definitely edging for a crash if this weekend isn’t somewhat chill. But also, these hard weeks, these “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” weeks, the “I’m not sure how I’m going to make it until bedtime” days…they are a little bit defining. (Formative? I can’t quite find the word.) They give perspective.

If you look at our modern life, you’d assume we love to avoid any hardship or inconvenience. Our life has been convenienced to death. If there is a minor annoyance our modern world has created a solution or product. Even if you didn’t know it was a problem they will explain why it is, and then give you a solution to it.

The thing is, I’m not sure that the point of life isn’t to avoid every hardship.

That sentiment has been said in many times over. “No rain, no rainbows.” “Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.” “No mud, no lotus.” (Thich Nhat Hanh) “Sunshine wouldn’t feel so good if it wasn’t for rain.” (Sunshine by Jonathan Edwards.)

And so on.

I mean, can you truly know full happiness if you haven’t experienced true sadness? Can you understand full relaxation without full exhaustion? Can you understand love if you’ve never lost it?

I’m not sure. But I do know hard work usually makes me feel more fulfilled and accomplished. And I have found that I don’t care for pursing a life that involves avoiding every struggle.

In Japanese Buddhism there is a word, Shugyō, which is a lifelong journey of self-improvement that involves repetition of something (often hard). It’s the idea of continuing to do something hard, over and over, to ultimately transform how an individual handles stress and adversity and build resilience

There is a concept called the “effort paradox” that says that people generally try to avoid effort in advance even though they usually value things more after they’ve worked hard for them. Basically, we all try to avoid hardship, even though struggling through it most often gives us more fulfillment. Outcomes are often judged as more valuable when they required significant effort to achieve. Work is often rated as one of the least pleasurable daily activities in the moment, yet also one of the most rewarding and meaningful. Research on “desirable difficulties” show us that tasks that require more struggle and effort often result in deeper learning and better long-term retention.

A classic example is something that’s called the “IKEA Effect.” People place a higher value on furniture they assemble themselves than identical furniture assembled by someone else. It’s because their effort increases perceived value.

If we look at what research says it doesn’t just show us that humans can tolerate effort or “overcome” it, but that we actually need it for meaning, purpose and a feeling of competence…that we know how to do things for ourselves. Much of modern life reduces effort or even paints is as something to avoid, but if we constantly avoid effort then we are also removing the very struggle that creates satisfaction.

I’ve talked before about pleasure vs. gratification. Pleasure is easy to find (effortless), it’s like watching a movie, eating a sundae, or going shopping at the mall. Gratification is harder to achieve (effort) because it usually requires time and work, like harvesting from your garden, reaching the summit on a hike, completing a book. In turn, the happiness we get from pleasure is fast but then fades away quick. Usually any happiness from eating a sundae is pretty much gone when we’re done eating it. But the gratification we get from making a long hike might linger on longer because it also created additional feelings like accomplishment, strength, and agency.

Sure, it’s fine for some things to be easier. I definitely use a dishwasher, and thankful for modern medicine, the invention of the car and air conditioning. I’m not against reducing unnecessary suffering. But point is just that I feel like somewhere along the way we started treating any effort as a problem to be solved and I so I now often find myself increasingly skeptical of the promise that life is supposed to be effortless.

Some of best parts of life are inseparable from effort. In a video I did about analog swaps, I talk about this. Almost any analog swap you make (for example having conversations in person instead of in text or driving with a map instead of GPS) require more effort. But they all provide other levels of satisfaction or pride.

And motherhood reminds me of this idea (often lol.) I don’t think I’d ever describe parenting as easy. But in many ways the hardness of it has taught me just as much (if not more) than the other parts of it. It’s made me more patient, more flexible, more humble, more compassionate, more open-minded. All these things came from the effort of it.

Cooking dinner is harder than ordering takeout. Reading a book is harder than scrolling your phone. Finding time for a coffee date is harder than texting. Exercising is harder than sitting on the couch. Reading is harder than getting the summary from AI. Almost everything meaningful asks something of us. And that’s the point.

Not that suffering is good but that avoiding every inconvenience could lead to a life that misses some of the deeper forms of fulfillment. The goal isn’t to create a life with no struggle…

the goal is to choose struggles that are worth it.

So, yea. Maybe the point of life isn’t to make everything easy.

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Please ignore typos, this was written without AI, probably with a baby on my hip.

This was week 5 of my 52 week writing challenge to write one article a week. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.