Challenge and meaning

The sine wave of life goes up and down. The downs are not fun.

A friend of mine described how he went to a music festival. It was a lot of fun, free and breezy. What was missing was challenge.

Challenge is one way we create meaning and satisfaction. Another way is to serve something beyond ourselves.

Struggle is when we work hard and get seemingly nowhere. Sometimes, after years of struggle, we make a breakthrough.

There’s a song lyric: “I’m in love with all of it.” That’s a little strong. I’m not in love with the horrible atrocities of life. The death and the illness. Yet, challenge is a potent motivator of growth, like weights at the gym.

I previously had a view of life where I was looking for the magic mansion on the hill, where there’d be no pain. If only I made a lot of money, or joined this religion, or achieved this life milestone, all would be well. I’d be surrounded by community, eating good food, and the weather would always be sunny.

Now I have a different view: challenge is part of life, and, it’s also the thing that causes the most amount of growth, of evolution, of becoming. We are evolving, neuroplastic creatures. Trying to stay the same causes stagnation, ennui. We need challenge, something to push against, for there to be meaning in life.