If You're Not Struggling, Maybe You Should Be

Our digital landscape perpetuates a particularly insidious myth: somewhere, certain individuals navigate life with effortless grace, untouched by the struggles that define most human experience. This carefully curated illusion—sustained through filtered social media feeds, selective storytelling, and commercial narratives—creates a phantom standard against which we measure our messy reality.

My personal journey resembles what I’d call “productive stumbling”—a series of missteps that somehow propelled me forward rather than backward. This trajectory of failing upward may represent the most favorable path available to any of us. Even those occupying society’s most envied positions acknowledge profound struggles beneath the polished surface. When billionaires lament their difficulties (though their complaints ring somewhat hollow when contrasted with material abundance that could sustain generations), they inadvertently confirm a universal truth: struggle remains democratic, touching lives across every socioeconomic stratum.

This recognition of suffering’s universality resonates across philosophical traditions. Buddhist thought centers on the concept of dukkha—often imprecisely translated as “suffering” but more accurately understood as the pervasive sense of unsatisfactoriness that characterizes conscious existence. The Pali term encompasses everything from acute pain to subtle discontentment, suggesting that dissatisfaction represents not a bug but a fundamental feature of the human operating system.

Western tradition offers parallel insights through Shakespeare’s immortal soliloquy from Hamlet—perhaps the most profound exploration of existential struggle in English literature:

To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep

No more; and by a sleep, to say we end

The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks

That Flesh is heir to? ‘Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,

To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there’s the rub,

For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause.

These exquisite lines capture humanity’s central dilemma: existence inherently involves suffering, yet our uncertainty about alternatives keeps us engaged in the struggle. Shakespeare articulates not merely personal anguish but the universal condition—“the thousand natural shocks that Flesh is heir to”—suggesting suffering represents our birthright as conscious beings.

These philosophical traditions converge toward a powerful insight: struggle represents not an anomaly but the normative human condition. Those rare individuals who report experiencing life without significant suffering likely occupy one of three categories: they possess an extraordinarily fortunate neurochemistry, they’ve achieved uncommon spiritual enlightenment, or they exhibit limited emotional awareness (in extreme cases, potentially associated with conditions like psychopathy). The expectation of a suffering-free existence contradicts both empirical observation and philosophical wisdom accumulated across millennia.

This perspective invites us to reconsider emotional states typically labeled as pathological. Perhaps certain forms of depression represent not dysfunction but appropriate responses to genuine suffering—both personal and collective. When we witness environmental degradation, social inequality, or interpersonal cruelty, sadness and heaviness constitute rational reactions rather than chemical imbalances requiring pharmaceutical intervention. While medication provides essential relief for many, our cultural tendency to pathologize normal human responses to difficult circumstances deserves critical examination. The pharmaceutical paradigm that reduces complex emotional experiences to neurotransmitter levels needing correction sometimes obscures the wisdom contained within difficult emotions.

The persistent myth of suffering-free existence serves particular economic interests by creating perpetual dissatisfaction—the psychological engine driving consumer capitalism. By establishing an unattainable standard of continuous happiness, this narrative places us on what psychologists call the hedonic treadmill, where each acquisition or achievement provides only momentary satisfaction before the baseline reasserts itself. This mechanism creates ideal consumers—always seeking the next purchase that promises (but never delivers) lasting fulfillment. Recognizing this pattern offers a path toward liberation from compulsive consumption and status-seeking behaviors.

There exists profound freedom in accepting life’s inherent challenges rather than constantly striving to transcend them. This acceptance doesn’t imply resignation but rather a shift in orientation—from perpetually seeking external solutions to cultivating presence with whatever currently exists. The pursuit of exotic experiences, status symbols, or wealth accumulation beyond necessity often represents elaborate distraction rather than genuine fulfillment. The realization that “this moment contains everything” may arrive more reliably through mindful attention to ordinary experience than through extraordinary consumption or achievement. The cup of coffee savored with full attention might offer more sustenance than the Instagram-perfect vacation experienced through the filter of digital documentation.