good conversation started here with Nat & Gary
I’m not personally a fan of Gary’s overall brand, but I appreciate his willingness to engage and listen
I think part of the mess is– there’s no generalizable advice that works for everyone; different people need different things
I’ve personally experimented with several different attitudes and perspectives over the years, and participated in different communities, hung out with different people with different experiences and learnings…
everybody is so different, need &want very very different things
was talking with my wife recently about how different our experiences were growing up
some people need to speak up more, some people need to shut up and listen
some people need to pay attention to their partner’s needs more, some people need to pay more attention to their own
I always think that we can’t think and talk about these things in the abstract – we have to start by examining our own experiences. what is my relationship in my life with struggle? have I struggled enough? too little? have I avoided struggle at a cost to myself and others?
a conversation with my older sister’s friend abt being open, relaxed, uninhibited: She thought of it as something straightforward. She came from a warm, loving family and her mind was full of warm, loving thoughts. I appreciated where she was coming from. Being uninhibited is goals. BUT
my backstory is a little different. When I was a teenager, when I chose to be “open, relaxed and uninhibited”, I ended up being a total asshole to the people around me. I utterly bungled and damaged many relationships. My unfiltered mind wasn’t full of warm loving thoughts!!
fascinating thing about meeting other people and having long conversations with them where you both really dive into each other’s psyches as deeply as you can is discovering how different we all are, & how we have completely different ideas about what things mean, eg “struggle”
looking back on my own life, did I struggle too little? too much? I think both statements are true. I struggled too much in silly ways that didn’t matter, & I didn’t struggle enough with things that did. there are no simple answers here; entire novels are written to explore this
for example – how much should you struggle, exactly, to sustain a relationship that seems like it’s failing? at what point do you call it quits? everybody has an opinion on this, and many are eager to have some sort of “objective’ markers and rules to simplify decision-making
but ultimately, at the final moment, once you’ve exhausted all the common sense advice, there is a lonely point where nobody else can help you, nobody else can decide for you. you have to take ownership of your own life, your own decisions, and decide how to be.
interestingly.. a common trait I detect in a lot of guys (I’m not so sure about women) is a fear and/or aversion to taking responsibility for their own life in this way. they latch on to a GaryVee or a Jordan Peterson or a Superstar Rajini – something outside themselves to guide their decisions
I think… these guys even do their idols a disservice by idolizing them this way. with struggle in particular there’s a strain of fanaticism that’s basically self-flagellation. navigating life via pain, via suffering. “pain is real & true, and I know I’m alive because it hurts”
a friend and I both experienced a version of this ourselves when dealing with our workaholicism a few years ago. we discovered that we were both exhausting ourselves at work as a sort of psychological protective mechanism. a moral defense. i can’t be a fuckup if i’m suffering!!!
in both our cases, this desire for struggle, this desire for suffering, was a sort of simplistic reaction to feeling like we had misspent our youth, that we were ungrateful slobs as children who didn’t do our homework, didn’t do as we were told, and now needed to make up for it
AND YET!!! it remains true that there are many people in the world who are looking for an easy ticket to success. some people refuse to put in any effort to improving their relationships. some people rationalize and delude themselves at the expense of those around them!!
so… there is no easy answer. there really isn’t. if you think you have it all figured out, you’re likely either wrong, or lucky to have only experienced contexts where you’ve never had your principles tested to their breaking points. we’re all figuring it out as we go along
I do empathize and agree with Nat re: #StrugglePorn being problematic. While everything is arbitrary and relative in the absolute sense, in a practical sense we live in a particular context, & there’s definitely this fetishization of “I must work myself to the bone to be worthy”
there was that mom with “i’m so fit, what’s your excuse” that went viral in 2013 – and then a couple of years later revealed that she struggled with eating disorders, marital problems and hating herself
in a way, The Struggle really is a sort of faustian bargain for moral worth
(There IS also something interesting to be said about how there’s a certain “robber baron turned philanthropist” aspect to speaking out against The Struggle after you’ve already gotten the fruits of your labor from The Struggle – but that’s a whole ‘nother story I think)
I think ultimately the challenge for each individual is to rethink from first principles what the point of everything is. what moral worth is. what do you want, and why? what is the narrative in your head about struggles, both big and small? what matters to you?
Anyway. If you’re struggling with something tough, I hope you find lightness, joy, peace.
If you have no struggles whatsoever, I hope you find something worth struggling for.
May you reach the end knowing that you struggled well, in the right ways, for the right reasons. 💪🏾
One more thing:
Camus said “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart”
I actually think we have to find joy that’s ~independent of the struggle
However bad the struggle, you gotta laugh