Humans love comfort, and work is often seen as something to avoid. However, I argue that work is not only unavoidable but also beneficial to our lives and can contribute to longevity.
Let us first define what work is. I refer not only to your daily job but also to everything that is challenging and requires mental or physical effort, such as family duties and hobbies. Going to the gym to stay fit or reading a book to learn more about a particular topic is considered work.
Contrary to popular belief, happiness does not come from buying comfort with money. Pursuing money and happiness will not make you happy. Consider life like a video game. To enjoy the game to its fullest extent, you must devote yourself to it. Games are designed to be challenging, and joy comes from hard work. Taking an easy path in life is like using cheat codes in a video game. You may level up instantly and beat all the stages, but you will lose the fun and purpose of the game.
That is why many people who suddenly receive a windfall often end up back where they started or even worse soon after.
A story that encourages people to relax and chill goes like this: A businessman on vacation meets a fisherman who catches and cooks a fish for him. To express his gratitude, the businessman offers the fisherman some business advice. He suggests that the fisherman could sell his fish to a better dealer in town, hire more people to fish for him, and expand his customer base to other towns. The fisherman seems uninterested and keeps asking what the next step is and where it will all lead. After painting this master business expansion plan, the businessman says the ultimate goal is perhaps to buy a beach cottage, go on vacation, and listen to the soothing sound of the tides without worrying about anything. The fisherman shrugs and says, "Isn't this what I'm doing now?"
The story seems to advise people to relax and not worry about goals. However, what is missing from the story is the rationale for having a successful, fruitful journey. The so-called goal of retiring after many years of grinding is not the real goal. It is a means to keep you moving forward and to keep you reaching the real goal, which is the journey itself. The journey is always more important than the destination. The destination is just there to keep you excited about your journey. Focusing only on the destination makes the game meaningless.
If you think deeper, you may fall into a downward spiral of nihilism, where everything seems meaningless. Even if you hustle and grind your whole life, you will just run around in circles. It is an unsettling idea that reminds me of Nietzsche.
Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, famously believed that the meaning of life is to be found in the will to power. He saw the will to power as the fundamental driving force behind all human behavior, encompassing our desire for self-preservation, self-expression, and self-overcoming. For Nietzsche, life is not meant to be a passive existence, but a constant striving towards greater power and self-realization.
Nietzsche's concept of the will to power is complex and multifaceted. At its core, it is the desire to exert one's influence over the world and to achieve a sense of personal mastery. This can manifest in a variety of ways, from artistic creation and intellectual pursuit to physical strength and dominance over others. Nietzsche believed that the will to power was a natural and necessary part of human existence, driving us towards growth and self-improvement.
What Nietzsche is saying is similar to my argument. Constant striving is the key, and constant work is unavoidable.
So the million-dollar question is, what is my view on the meaning of life? I would say that perhaps the meaning of life is not a valid question. Whenever you start to question the meaning of life, you spoil the game. The meaning of life is to be engaged, to experience the ups and downs, happiness and sadness, prosperity and adversity. If there is a meaning of life, whenever you start to question it, it will be gone. Because you start to focus on the destination, you want to know where you are going. Then you lose focus on the journey, and the whole thing becomes meaningless.
Constant work is just part of life. The good thing is we should not feel sad about that. Work keeps us engaged in life and prevents us from falling into the unsettling realm of nihilism.