Choosing what sucks
or, accepting bad shit
A couple weeks ago at a tech conference I heard a sentiment that has been echoing in my head, which can be paraphrased as:
Something will always suck in your solution, your job is to choose what.
~Some Nerds
And immediately I got home and the first book I picked up had a central thesis of exactly the same thing:
Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience. Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires. The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of struggle is a struggle. The denial of failure is a failure. Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame.
Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and to tear it out is not only impossible, but destructive: attempting to tear it out unravels everything else with it. To try to avoid pain is to give too many fucks about pain. In contrast, if you’re able to not give a fuck about the pain, you become unstoppable.
~ Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck
This, too, was an underlying thread of why Squirt has to go to public school even though it sucks.
Green Grass
Somewhere along the way I think humanity got convinced that bad shit was avoidable. Whether that was designing a perfect software solution or getting that one job that is better in every conceivable way from the one you currently have. I think we’ve forgotten that frequently “the grass is always greener” is a warning rather than a recommendation. The grass is not always greener but, when you get over there, I promise there’s going to be some brown grass.
Choose what sucks and embrace the choice.
I drove a car with metal flooring and towels to soak up the water from leaks because it ran fine and I didn’t want a car payment. I eventually switched to a truck that’s a pain in the ass to park but now I can actually carry shit. We moved to a new house with a much more painful mortgage payment to guarantee that Squirt gets to stay in that public school he hates so much. I left a job filled with friends to work one that is wildly isolating and now my introverted ass invents reasons to go out in public just to be around other humans even though I don’t even like other humans mostly.
We cannot control the world, only how we choose to respond to the world.
I sometimes wonder if this is part of the ineffable Meaning of Life: recognizing what you can control but at the same time recognizing that no amount of control eliminates all the bad shit.
Judging Choices (or, Actions Have Consequences)
In my Balatro post I talked about choosing how you respond in the game of life. The options may be very limited but there is always some amount of choice. And, because there is always choice, there are always inflection points in the Game Of Life: that is, the direction of the whole life can change in an instant. And we are always responsible for these choices.
“...man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, in other respect is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. The Existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never agree that a sweeping passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts and is therefore an excuse. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion.”
~ Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions
Responsible for everything that he does. So, you have to take it seriously. And, because we are responsible for everything that we do, we are thus able to be judged based on our actions. There is no excuse. There is no absolution. You cannot be too drunk to know better. You cannot be so angry that you just lost control. And if you didn’t take the time to think about the longer term ramifications, well, that’s on you.
You are the choices you make but always recognize that even the best choices are going to lead pain and you will make some wrong choices too.
The Push and the Pull
“At the still point of the turning world.
Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is.”
Eliot’s still point has always encapsulated the idea of responding to something I think of as “The Push and the Pull.” That is, the things we can control and the things we have to react to. Sometimes we can push life in a particular direction, sometimes all we can do is be pulled along. We are each a still point and we have to pick how we can dance between the push and the pull. Sure, it’s a little poetical but I’m not sure you can really bring someone like Eliot into a conversation and not have to lean a bit into metaphor.
Here again is the choice. Where do you want to push? What will you do when you are pulled in a direction? You’re dancing at the still point and you are your own agency.
The Point
I think the point is about agency. The point is about personal responsibility. And at the point there should be some honesty as well. Your life is going to suck sometimes. And sometimes it’ll be because you fucked up and other times it’ll be because the world fucked you up. Embrace the suck. But if you can recognize that choices aren’t about eliminating the pain, they’re just choosing where the pain will show up, I think that’s a solid step in the right direction. At least something to think about.
(This got a little navel-gaze-y but let’s see what Squirt has to say)
Squirt Says…
I like the way that you talked about how you have to choose the bad. There will always be some sort of trade off. Whether that be quality or functionality or anything really. You just have to pick what you care about.
Dad Responds…
I was certain the words “trade off” were in the post somewhere before you mentioned them but, nope, that’s a term you had in your own head. One of the best things to see with someone reading your stuff is that they use their own words to restates something. Shows they were paying attention.
