I was once told that the best way to get followers on social media was to write “short and stupid” articles to cater to the equally short attention spans that social media tends to create. I would argue I should do the exact opposite to fight the attempted annihilation of our attention spans, so I will be following through on that thought with this long article. In a prior article discussing Eudaimonia, an insightful reader who always asks interesting questions and is also teaching a university class on “Economics and Life,” posed the question “Is happiness the primary goal of a good life?” He also showed the above photo from the movie Wall-E.
I am now asking you, my reader, “Is this a life of happiness?”
This question segues nicely into some topics that we encounter at our sit-down sessions at the EOC. Happiness in itself is a highly subjective term, one which is often a vague and poor attempt to quantify and measure our lives or situations. Oftentimes, the media and advertising sources—the men behind the curtains of modern society—make us believe that happiness is the key to a good life. This happiness is most often contingent upon comfort, as comfort envelops us like a blanket, telling us to avoid those nuances of daily life, like effort and exertion—as long as we are entertained. Premade meals, the latest devices, and lots of Netflix does a body good according to the devil on our shoulder (or in the palm of our hands). For children, the messaging is often the same: watch Disney channel, play with lots of sweatshop-made toys from Amazon scattered all over your house, and start on those devices early (kindergarten if you get to go to a public school!). Being outside and riding bikes is old-fashioned and exerting, whispers that devil—be comfortable and happy like Wall-E.
From behind the curtain, we are constantly told that effort and discomfort merely stand in the way of happiness, and when these two factors get in our way, our only option is to consume our way through them. Whether you are a boomer or baby, buy, buy, buy your way to happiness. From birth until our ultimate incarceration in a prefabricated plastic 55 and older community-soon-to-be-landfill, we are spoon-fed this crapulent advice. And when it fails us, just keep buying.
Some things have not changed over the past several thousand years. Instead of watching gladiators kill themselves, we watch garbage on devices made by slave labor in factories with nets along the windows to catch the workers who jump out.
But is this true? Is happiness our ultimate goal, and if so, how do we even define it? And are we even achieving it with our current situation? When approaching this question, I thought back on those rewarding times in my life, the fond memories I cherish and the stories often retold at the dinner table. The stories that stand out in our minds are impactful enough on our “happiness” scale that they come up again and again. Just thinking about them makes us happy. The same can be said for those rewarding experiences in our lives. Ask yourself the same question. Are those times when you watched countless hours of Golden Girls reruns, sat on your device looking at Facebook, or texted your friends? How about when you did the same while your children sat there waiting for you to finish? How many important aspects of our lives require oodles of effort and hard work? How many resembled the WALL-E picture above? When I think back on the most important aspects of in my life, I include the following:
- My marriage
- Having our children
- Completing my books
- Completing medical school and training
- Making the Exercise Oncology Center a success
- My time at MIT
This simple question can be quite insightful. For me, all six of these required and still require an incredible amount of work, effort, and sacrifice. Being woken up at all hours of the night by crying babies or pages from the hospital floor when I was overnight was not easy. If you told me how great MIT was my junior year, I would have laughed in your face while working on a problem set and studying for thermodynamics. Dedicating countless hours to writing and research takes much time and effort. Medical school was absolutely brutal at times, and there were periods during my intern year where I worked 29 of 31 days in a row, staying overnight and working 31 hours straight once a week. Getting the EOC up and running and successful was and is a seven day a week job, yet every time I walk into the place or see a 75-year-old dead lift 130 pounds the feeling of “happiness” is hard to even describe. Lastly, as most of you know, marriage is lifelong work and effort.
This latter example, which is often taken with a grain of salt, provides insight into other areas of our lives, something that I only realized after it was pointed out to me by one of my philosophical mentors. Strangely enough, many people think that their marriage should just magically work out and not require intense work and effort, which can’t be further from the truth. Forget the whole being open to feedback, working with the other person every day, and constantly pushing to be a better person and spouse—nope, it is supposed to magically work out without effort throughout countless years of our lives until we end up like that old couple sitting in separate bathtubs in the creepy Cialis commercial. As this was explained to me, a light bulb went off, as I realized I had fallen into the trap as well. For many, this is but a mere microcosm of the issue of the idolization of comfort that spills out into all aspects of life, including one that will most definitely require much effort (and exertion). (As a side-note, while divorce rates spiked in the 70s then have steadily dropped, the average marriage in the US only lasts 8 years. Perhaps what we are being told is important in life is misdirected, as the numbers would suggest. Hopefully the latter will change as we start to realize that relationships are not 90s movies with Jeremy Piven and Mandy Moore, but rather a lifelong requirement of serious effort.)
Like all things in life these days, marriage apparently does not require effort… just buy a couple bathtubs and some pills from Big Pharma and you should be good.
Entertainment and Acedia
“The hour here is painful, but it makes me feel great the remaining 23 hours of my day.”
-EOC participant
Upon arriving at work every Monday morning, I feel my best when I accomplished something over the weekend, whether it is plastering a wall, building a stone wall, or tackling garden projects with my daughters. Strangely, oftentimes the realization that with effort comes accomplishment is acknowledged at work, but ignored at home. For instance, most of us would agree that to have a successful job, receive a promotion, climb the ranks, or just do the required work to get paid, it takes effort, and usually, considerable effort. Few would argue with this—work is not entertainment. Yet, when it comes to the above factors, like our marriages, raising children, important hobbies and passion projects, and yes, our health, we seem to forget this. We tend to approach the gift of health as if it will magically be given to us repeatedly, regardless of our age or situation, and with or without required effort. We acknowledge that if we slack off at work we may be fired, yet simultaneously assume our body and mind will never turn their backs on us, even if we mistreat them.
The United States is currently experiencing the realization of this fallacy, as the house of cards is crumbling due to a faulty foundation that no amount of “happiness” can support. The rate of obesity in adults has eclipsed 40%, while 15% of all adults—and a whopping 30% of individuals over 65—have diabetes, a disease that barely existed several decades ago. While these numbers illustrate our poor nutrition choices, the high rate of knee replacements in an immobile population that rarely exercises, and the ever increasing rates of falls and fractures reveal our diminishing strength and mobility from our dormant and “comfortable” lifestyles. Lastly, our climbing rates of anxiety, depression, and psychiatric medication usage illustrates our lack of care for our mental health and constant pounding of our brain with noise, devices and finite games. If a joint is weak and immobile through years (or a lifetime) of avoiding discomfort or effort, how would it ever be protected from damage and destruction when we need to use it? (Yes, this is why we see individuals who never exercised nor have explained “wear and tear” of their knees yet replace them due to “wear and tear”). Ten percent of all women now undergo knee replacements in their lifetime, yet a small minority of elderly women actually exercise. Like an employer in response to lack of effort, our joints will fire us.
“The cult of passivity and so-called relaxation is one of the most dangerous developments of our times. Essentially, it too may represent a camouflage pattern, the double wish not to see the dangers and challenges of life and not to be seen. We cannot escape all the tensions that surround us; they are part of life, and we have to learn to cope with them adequately and to use our leisure time for more creative and gratifying activities.”
-The Rape of the Mind, by Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D.
While the point of this article is to help us understand the intimate link between our effort, the absolute requirement of discomfort, and our health, the positive of the situation is the realization that rewarding processes in life take effort, hard work, dedication, sacrifice, and yes, even pain. Hard work and effort produce tangible results, further increasing the feeling of reward. If we actually want to achieve happiness—whatever that is—the irony is that physical and mental effort are required. The avoidance of pain and effort for pleasure will ultimately lead to the avoidance of pleasure, no matter what the advertisements by the influencers tell you on social media.
While the hour at the EOC may be painful for the woman in the quote above, she understands that pain can ultimately lead to pleasure, while too much pleasure will ultimately lead to pain. We should get comfortable being uncomfortable and our best bet, as advised by a man who made it through years in concentration camps, our best bet may be to avoid a tensionless life, not desire one.
While this realization has been recent, the knowledge of this contradiction is not new. In Inferno, the first book of Dante’s Divine Comedy, as he describes the several layers of Hell, the Fourth Circle of Hell, Acedia, stands out. Acedia is described in the Bible as sloth, while others refer to it as a lack of zeal and fire, excessive apathy, couchism (i.e. too much couch time), or, according to the philosopher Thomas Aquinas, simply not caring enough or being a pushover out of convenience (my translation). A description of Acedia brings the Wall-E picture above to mind. Modern society promotes acedia, and prescribes it as comfort—something we desire at all times—and tells us how natural and normal it is to spend the majority of our waking hours staring at a screen, whether a TV, computer, or phone. Wall-E may have been a cartoon, but it was a remarkably accurate glance into the future.
Mirroring the virtual reality goggles, acedia will eventually lead to disengagement from reality, some likely resentment and anger, and will follow up with some spoon-feeding of premade meals packaged in PFAs, television, and countless hours on devices as one continues the mental Dante-like spiral through the layers of our modern consumerism and slothful hell.
Is this happiness or prison?
“One of the marvels of the world: The sight of a soul sitting in prison with the key in its hand.”
-Rumi
Being Healthy is Uncomfortable
The ancient philosophers knew this all too well and spent considerable time discussing ways to avoid acedia. The ancients knew that excessive comfort, sloth, acedia—whatever you want to call it—was not the means to a healthy or fulfilling life. Even the definition of acedia, which initially was used as the word referring to the deadly sin of sloth, has transformed from physical laziness to a lack of caring and apathy. The ancients knew that the push for comfort was always only several small steps away from a lifestyle that may sound pleasant in theory, but, in reality, would leave us less fulfilled, less healthy, and on the victim list of acedia.
“Acedia is a bad thought, it’s a passion that is opportunistic, just like this virus. It will strike just when we’re at a low point, our immune system is down, because we’re feeling anxious and tired and restless and bored and sad about how things used to be—and all of those things are classic signs of acedia.”
There are many translations and definitions of the word acedia, but it is clear that acedia is lack of purpose, lack of ikigai and the polar opposite of an Intentional Lifestyle. With acedia, health is nearly impossible, and while the modern prophets and cultural voices may tell us it is the path to happiness, reality paints a much different picture.
Times are tougher now, I get it. Back in Dante’s time, sloth must have been much harder to achieve—without cars, Amazon, and instant meals, and brain-drain devices, one had to walk everywhere, interact with others, engage in much activity simply to live. Humans had no choice but to avoid sloth and they did not need shock collars around their wrists to count their steps. Things have gotten tough with cars, microwaves, sinks, running water, dishwashers, and the ability to order anything we want on the internet, we often “need” those digital shock collars to poke and prod us to move more and be active. Sure, we may use the elevator all day, drive everywhere we go, and then walk on the treadmill at the gym, but opportunities for movement may be less these days. Overall, life has merely been turned upside down and into a series of finite games to coax us into performing a mere fraction of the activity that used to be part of normal life.
We get sucked into buying modern devices that make us lazy, anxious, and depressed, and then are told we can buy more devices to miraculously save us from the sloth! While we are spoon-fed that this is normal, we are at a point where simply looking around loudly signals that it is far from normal, and in fact, at this point we all know something is seriously wrong.
Even gymgoers get pulled into the comfort trap: many go to the gym to improve and feel good about themselves but are faced with a paradox when they reveal discomfort and pain is required to achieve that goal. The comfort trap leaves them paying for a gym membership and traveling there simply to walk on the treadmill or move around 2 lb. rubber dumbbells—activities that don’t require a gym membership.
We have watched as our children have been pulled into the abyss, as now 1 in 5 are obese and they are experiencing climbing rates of type 2 diabetes (which used to be called adult-onset diabetes), sprinkled with climbing rates of anxiety, depression, and behavior disorders. Public schools are providing children with brain-scrambling addictive devices at age five. Big pharma is pushing to save them, inject them with expensive medications to kill their appetite and now giving 1 in 12 antidepressants and other psychiatric meds. For many, the turning of their children into an experimental pin cushion has become the wake-up call.
“If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures; if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endures.”
– Musonius Rufus
The Good News
The good news is that the house may have fallen, but the cards are now in our hands and we can make a change. We can take the straw out of our mouth, throw the goggles away, and rise up from our incapacitating chairs. Effort and sacrifice—those characteristics that are required for health—can also, over the long term, fuel our goals for happiness. Simply playing this infinite game provides compounding interest of physical and mental benefits. We have been duped for decades but the curtain has been pulled away exposing the man tugging on the levers. An understanding that a valued life includes tension, discomfort, effort, and pain provides a rippling butterfly effect ending with our health. As a wise sage once told me, the point of the gym is to be uncomfortable for an hour so you feel better the remaining 23.
The push for the almighty comfort has become a worshiped element of society, but this is a false idol best avoided, lest you want to be pulled into the Circle of Acedia. Heed the advice passed down to us over the centuries as you think back to your most cherished times and the effort that was required to make those times so great. Let those thoughts remind you of the effort required to have fulfilling relationships, an accomplished and complete life, and yes, your health. Make this a routine. As Aristotle once said, “Excellence is not an act but a habit.”
Comfort and the avoidance of pain often ends in discomfort and pain. A constant push for “happiness” through an obsession with comfort will likely end in unhappiness. Effort, on the other hand, will more often end with reward and accomplishment, the fertilizer for the fruits of labor and achieving genuine happiness.
Enjoy the effort required to improve and maintain your health. It just might make you happier.
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