The Hard Questions

This blog post is pertaining to Mark Manson’s article titled, “Ask the Hard Questions: You Probably Know to Ask Yourself, ‘What Do I want?’ Here’s A Way Better Question.”  The way better question that Manson begs is, “What pain do you want? What are you willing to struggle for?” This article brought up mixed emotions for me and caused a slough of questions I do not have any answers to. This post is very much a journal entry, but I felt like sharing it.

Manson makes the assumption at the beginning of the article that people “want” something. He uses the example of wanting the reward of being a rock star and did not want the struggle of practicing and booking gigs which is why he did not become a rock star. However, something I struggle with is not knowing what it is to “want” something at all, whether that be the struggle or the reward. Sure, I want a more just world but there are so many avenues that I can go about working towards that. So I utilize my “skills” like writing and making maps to achieve this and writing and making maps becomes the struggle I am willing to endure to achieve a more just world. But I often ask myself as I read endless research papers and watch how-to videos on Adobe Illustrator, do I actually LIKE this struggle? How do I know that I “like” something? Am I just doing this because my friends are involved in it or do I actually enjoy the struggle? Because in order to know what struggle I am willing to endure I have to fundamentally understand what liking something is. Is liking something just not, not liking something? It is easier for me to answer what I don’t like than what I actually like. And do I just like something because I am good at it, say have an artistic eye for cartography, and is this a symptom of not wanting to work at something I am innately bad at like math even if I enjoy math? Do we only enjoy what we are good at? 

What I really enjoy are picking out my outfits in the morning, digging through bins of clothes at Goodwill outlets and trying different curry recipes. These are all what society deem’s as “hobbies.” Do I just tolerate the struggle of reading endless research papers and watching how-to videos so I work to have enough money to live in an area where there is a goodwill outlet and curry ingredients? This is hard for me to accept. I don't want to live a life where I work eight hours a day just to have a couple of enjoyable hours in the evenings and on the weekends. Because to me that is settling. So do I stop what I am doing and try to become a professional consigner or go to culinary school? If I really want a more just world, digging at the Goodwill outlet and making curry do not work towards this. So do I really WANT a more just world if I do not enjoy the struggle for it? Maybe I just haven’t found the right path to work towards this? What if I don’t want to walk down any path? Do I not contain grit? Am I just tired of school?

Maybe I need to reframe what I want in different terms in order to determine what I am willing to struggle for. Is this my crisis a symptom of the alienation problem that Sergio Gomez talked about in “Four Directors for the Environmental Humanities?” Either way this semester has been quite the existential crisis.