Dealing with life's challenges is the substance of life
What if the objective of life isn’t to fix something and move on, but just to improve things? What if meeting, facing down, and addressing challenges isn’t something we do in order to get to a place where we can then live life, but the actual substance of life? In Four Thousand Weeks Oliver Burkeman writes:
Once you give up on the unattainable goal of eradicating all your problems, it becomes possible to develop an appreciation for the fact that life just is a process of engaging with problem after problem, giving each one the time it requires—that the presence of problems in your life, in other words, isn’t an impediment to a meaningful existence but the very substance of one. [emphasis added]
The process may be incremental and boring, but it is also one you can get steadily better at. Perhaps even learn to enjoy—the progress you’re making, the constant stream of small triumphs that come from relentlessly addressing challenges just beyond your reach … just beyond for now, anyway, as you notice and probe and test and evaluate, select a promising approach, implement and repeat and re-evaluate and fine tune, internalize. Now the challenge is no longer a challenge because you are a person who by nature responds to it properly. And one who has become a bit more skilled at the process. Certainly one who reaps the benefits of proper responses and improved skills.
Maybe even one who takes pleasure and satisfaction in not only the benefits, but in engaging with the process, i.e. life itself.
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