The path of least resistance
Feb. 12th, 2007 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeThe topic has come up lately about taking the path of least resistance. This is what I've called it in my head, anyway. Someone mentioned spending the whole day just following people where they went (walking one friend to work led to meeting another friend, which led to meeting a third friend, etc.), and how it allowed her to reconnect with six or seven people she hadn't seen in a long time in a way that she felt was meaningful.
I wonder what it is about hardship that makes us feel virtuous. Somehow, it seems, the harder life is, the better we feel about it, as though somehow suffering makes it not only worthwhile, but right. I have observed people have (perhaps unconconscious) hardship contests, as though being worse off than one's neighbour makes one worthy of the admiration of others, and automatically makes one a better person.
I wonder, though, if the opposite might not be true.
I don't mean to say that being slothful or just "letting life happen" is the right way. That's not what I mean by the "path of least resistance." I don't mean that we should sit back and abdicate responsibility, and in that I suppose the example I used in my first sentence is misleading.
I simply wonder if doing the right thing is really as hard as we make it out to be. I wonder if, were we to make the choice to always do right (by our own definition of what that is, I guess), we would find that it's always onerous, and that hardship and deprivation is always the result. That, by doing the right thing, we are necessarily making ourselves suffer, and that the only consolation we can derive from the suffering is that we're doing it because it's right. It would be interesting to see if, after a certain time (weeks or months or years, I'm not sure) of doing the right thing simply because it's the right thing to do, we might not find that it was a lot easier than we originally anticipated, and that in the end it has made our lives simpler and easier and more straightforward. That in time, we will find that we are, in fact, happy with how things have turned out.
In the same way that it's easier to tell the truth than to lie, because one doesn't have to keep track of the truth the same way one has to keep track of all the lies that follow the original lie, I wonder if it isn't easier to live a good life on the whole, and that most of the perceived hardship of living a simple, healthy life isn't just that: a perception and not reality.
If I find out the answer to that, I'll let you know. :)
I wonder what it is about hardship that makes us feel virtuous. Somehow, it seems, the harder life is, the better we feel about it, as though somehow suffering makes it not only worthwhile, but right. I have observed people have (perhaps unconconscious) hardship contests, as though being worse off than one's neighbour makes one worthy of the admiration of others, and automatically makes one a better person.
I wonder, though, if the opposite might not be true.
I don't mean to say that being slothful or just "letting life happen" is the right way. That's not what I mean by the "path of least resistance." I don't mean that we should sit back and abdicate responsibility, and in that I suppose the example I used in my first sentence is misleading.
I simply wonder if doing the right thing is really as hard as we make it out to be. I wonder if, were we to make the choice to always do right (by our own definition of what that is, I guess), we would find that it's always onerous, and that hardship and deprivation is always the result. That, by doing the right thing, we are necessarily making ourselves suffer, and that the only consolation we can derive from the suffering is that we're doing it because it's right. It would be interesting to see if, after a certain time (weeks or months or years, I'm not sure) of doing the right thing simply because it's the right thing to do, we might not find that it was a lot easier than we originally anticipated, and that in the end it has made our lives simpler and easier and more straightforward. That in time, we will find that we are, in fact, happy with how things have turned out.
In the same way that it's easier to tell the truth than to lie, because one doesn't have to keep track of the truth the same way one has to keep track of all the lies that follow the original lie, I wonder if it isn't easier to live a good life on the whole, and that most of the perceived hardship of living a simple, healthy life isn't just that: a perception and not reality.
If I find out the answer to that, I'll let you know. :)
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-12 05:17 pm (UTC)The effects of a culture founded by Protestants? :)
This is an interesting post. I agree with you, both in principle and from my own experience. I'm tempted to elaborate but I think a longer answer would move out of the realm of commenthood and into a separate post.
Blessed are the pure of heart...
Date: 2007-02-12 05:57 pm (UTC)Well said.
I also think you know and shared the answer... and it brightened my day!
Re: Blessed are the pure of heart...
Date: 2007-02-12 06:18 pm (UTC)Every week I (or sometimes my husband, depending on what we have on) make a batch of muffins and a week's worth of packed lunches, and stow them in the fridge. Because we're very often busy and/or out in the evenings, the packed lunches are very often our 'main meal' of the day and so it's something substantial, like curry & rice, or beef stew, or pasta with ham & mushroom sauce. This takes a lot of time and effort. Grocery shopping, cooking, packaging, cleaning up after. It eats 4 hours of our weekend that could be spent doing something else...
And once in a while I get upset, because it's so damn hard to keep doing it week after week, for no other reason than "It's the right thing to do" - because it's better for our health, and our budget. Sometimes I really, really wish I could eat expensive, bad-for-me food (and have my husband do the same) and not care. But I can't. So I keep doing this large amount of thankless work week anfter week after week, just because it's right, for much of the past two years.
It hasn't gotten any easier yet. Maybe I'm simply inefficient.
Re: Blessed are the pure of heart...
Date: 2007-02-12 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-12 09:35 pm (UTC)I guess it depends on what you mean by "doing the right thing." From a moral or ethical standpoint---and a healthy living standpoint---I think doing the right thing often does feel hard because it seems as though so many people are not doing what is right, and so as a result one feels as though one is fighting against a current---that everyone else is taking the path of least resistance. And if one feels one has taken the more difficult moral highground, one tends to feel virtuous as a result.
As for hardship contests, I think I know what you mean, although is it really (just) admiration people want for their (perceived or genuine) suffering, or sympathy and maybe pity? I think that for many people admiration often feels less rewarding, feels less nourishing, than sympathy/pity does.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-13 04:07 am (UTC)I am firmly in the "If I can do the right thing and still sit on my yacht sipping drinks, I will" camp. I don't know about you.
And yes, sometimes it means taking a route that is gratifying, but not immediately while everyone else is running around having their fun.
Anyone who is depriving themselves and making a point of using it to gain higher moral ground has their own issues.
Good post.