Select your struggle

You can take a plane or drive, also. (U.S. National Archives)

Watching over the shoulders of gamer friends and relatives as they choose their avatars for the journey ahead, I’ve learned about the tradeoffs involved.

You can have strength, agility, stamina, or cunning — but not all four to the same degree. Each option has its vulnerabilities and advantages. You’ve got to make decisions about what will be most useful to you, based on your own unique playing style and preferences.

Kinda like life, right? Except in life, some of us get the idea somewhere that we’re supposed to be good at everything and that there shouldn’t be any tradeoffs.

However, there’s an even darker message in play in many cultures, resulting from the distortion of spiritual principles over the course of a multi-generational game of telephone. And that is the idea that misery is virtuous in and of itself.

It’s true that challenges and trials are a source of growth. It’s true that some of those (getting a college degree) are self-imposed, and some (a global pandemic) are not.

It’s also true that suffering is an unavoidable part of being human, one that we must learn to cope with as we deal with events and circumstances that are not exactly to our wishes. We may learn to transcend suffering, but not without encountering it.

So if hard work builds our mettle and suffering can be the engine of spiritual growth, we might conclude that pain and misery are desirable. But if we seek the pain and misery for its own sake, we stall out. Instead of seeking out fresh and interesting challenges — new ways of growing — we might get stuck in old, familiar ones. We’ve taken the easy way out, experiencing a bleak existence for no good reason.

I’ve done this. One thing I know about myself is that I am happiest by the water. The ocean is best, but I also love lakes and rivers. So naturally, I chose to move to Atlanta, Georgia, a city that was formed at the intersection of two railroad lines — one of the few major cities in the world that is not on a body of water.

For years, I felt a heavy sadness about this, even as I worked hard to build a life and business in Atlanta. I sought to find beauty in other things around me. I traveled when I could to get that feeling of expansiveness that comes from being on the water. I listened to the clanking and whistling trains every night. I figured that the other five million people around me had gotten over their longing for water, and so could I.

Eventually, it began to dawn on me that most of the five million people around me didn’t care about the water at all. They didn’t experience an existential pain about their choice of city. They liked the trees, the mountains, the commerce. They weren’t suffering. I was making a choice to spend my life this way, fundamentally unhappy with my home.

I got to a point where I could appreciate Atlanta for what it is. That was a choice, too. But now I live in a city on the ocean, where my life is filled with sailing, rowing, and daily walks along the waterfront — and maybe someday, a home with a view. It brings me a lot of joy to be here, and the needless suffering I felt at being land-locked is over.

I’ve also experienced intentional misery in my work. I struggled with boring, routine tasks out of duty and that same misplaced sense of virtue. Grinding away to the point of tears, I didn’t realize that someone else would have been thrilled to take over. In my silly determination, I was depriving another person of a valuable opportunity they could have otherwise had. This is a pattern I have to coach my employees and clients out of, too. We tend to expect the work to be unpleasant, not realizing that someone else might actually be excited to do whatever we dislike. We don’t see that we will have greater opportunities for growth doing something we find fulfilling.

This same pattern shows up all over the place — even in the food, clothing, and entertainment I choose — and I’m constantly on guard against it. I can never make my life perfectly smooth and comfortable, and I wouldn’t want to. However, I can pursue challenges that are meaningful to me. I can work hard at endeavors that bring me joy, stimulate my brain, or build my muscles. I don’t have to struggle for no good reason.

If you find yourself gritting your teeth to get through the same old stuff you always do, it might be worth asking yourself whether you have to. Perhaps there are alternatives you have dismissed because you are more comfortable with the status quo. Remember that you can select your struggle, and you can pick one that more closely fits the direction you want to pursue in your life. In real life, you might not be able to select a new avatar, but you can choose what to do with the one you’ve got — the only one you get.