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. :)
