Why We Need Difficult Things.

Our day is surrounded by bubble wrap.

We wake up in a nice, warm bed. Our morning coffee is always perfect and convenient. Clothes get washed by a machine. Water runs on demand. If we’re cold, we throw on a jumper; if we’re hot, we flick on the aircon.

We can work from home, the fridge keeps our food from spoiling, Uber Eats is half an hour away, and now even the grocery stores deliver, so we don’t have to put pants on for ungodly amounts of time.

Society has done a wonderful job of making life easy.

And yet, rates of anxiety, restlessness, and loneliness continue to climb.

The reasons behind this are beyond my pay grade, and layered like an onion, but I believe a significant portion is that we’ve removed our life’s texture: difficulty with a purpose.

We evolved with friction. Like the grip on our tyres, friction made our life work. Whether it was collecting water, finding a bite to eat, making a bed or defending the family from the neanderthals from the valley over.

For most of our history, difficulty wasn’t optional; it was mandatory. It wasn’t always a ‘fight for your life’ kind of difficulty, but at least there was some. 100 years ago, we’d chop wood to stay warm, grow our own veggies, and wash our clothes by hand. Life required effort as a baseline setting, and inconvenience was just life.

Now, inconvenience can feel personal. An injustice.

I’ve done it plenty. Sitting in traffic feels infuriating. One of my five streaming services being out can wreck an evening. A wrong coffee order can throw us off the deep end.

Something inside us craves resistance. A bit of suck.

This can be different for everyone. It could be:

A cold early morning run
A hard solo weight session
A leg-burning hike
Learning a new skill (and quietening our inner voice that says to quit)

Doing hard things is soup for the soul.

That’s why doing difficult things feels disproportionately meaningful. A night sleeping on the ground sends us back to society tired, but fresh. That brutal workout can clear your head better than therapy. Living off the back of a partly functional shitbox of a motorbike in the Mongolian wilderness for twelve days makes you reorganise your priorities upon returning home. Oddly specific, I know.

Difficulty allows us to shine a light on what’s important. Really.

You stop worrying about your emails and start worrying about staying warm. Forget about looking like a Greek god, and think about filtering water.

Somewhere, amongst the shitty sleeps, cold mornings, sore legs and frustration, we get back on track, rediscovering some of the texture we lost.

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This post was previously published on Musings of a Half-Wit.

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