All things are full of weariness;
Ecclesiastes 1:8-9
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
9 What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Well . . . that’s . . . rather bleak. Whatever happened to…
You get out of life what you put into it.
The internet says Clint Eastwood, but I’m skeptical.
That’s more cheerful, isn’t it?
One of these quotations says that effort doesn’t contribute to happiness, and the other one argues that effort is an essential ingredient to satisfaction. On the one hand, it can be easy to accuse someone of “copping out” of something difficult, whether that’s abandoning intellectual effort or just letting go of “giving a shit”. On the other hand, on a cynical day, it’s tempting to think that all that effort is just extra work, that the extra work makes you unhappy, and that things would be better or easier if you didn’t try as hard.
The tricky thing about cliches or proverbs is that they are only valid some of the time. However, they have cultural staying power because they so succinctly capture a significant chunk of our experience.
I, like some of you, really like digging in and working hard at problems and challenges. The bigger the challenge or problem, the bigger the thrill if I “win” by solving the puzzle. While I get a thrill out of effort, I am also quite skilled at making myself absolutely miserable by burying myself in effort. I know the Sound of Music says, “Climb every mountain,” but man, if you do that all at once without pacing and planning, you’ll just die of exhaustion. And I will be honest, I have, more than once, burned myself out to the point where I could do almost nothing besides physically hurt from the toll of emotional energy I had poured out into a project.
That, admittedly, is still a level of exhaustion I’ve seldom experienced. What isn’t so exceptional is working myself into perpetual, low-grade exhaustion. That’s my default mode. Why? Because I never learned that I needed to manage my emotional and physical resources, that I didn’t have an infinite pool to draw from, and if I wanted to do something hard, or keep doing a lot of things that are hard, I would really have to prepare for it and manage it well, or else “eat” the cost in terms of my emotional well-being.
Also, for a while I thought I was being a wimp by not wanting to eat the cost (once I realized that was a thing). It took me some exposure to healthier ways of thinking to realize that what I now think of as the “maintenance of personal homeostasis” skill-set is a skill-set that a lot of people learn from their families growing up, so they practice that skill-set with “unconscious competence” as an adult.
Let me break down both of those terms I just threw in there.
I use “homeostasis” in this context to think about my personal well-being as a status (with some biological aspects to it) that need to be maintained in order for me to live. My body-soul-spirit combo naturally “wants” to return to homeostasis all the time by getting adequate rest, food, water, exercise, etc. However, due to environmental factors AND my personal habits, I have choices that contribute positively or negatively to that homeostasis.
Thinking about it as homeostasis helps me remind myself that I am a finite little organism that just wants to thrive. If I take care of myself, I can aide in that thriving. If I don’t commit to sensible, if sometimes costly, self-care habits, my little organism will not thrive. I can’t delude myself that I don’t have needs…anymore. But having needs means I can’t stress that organism the hell out ALL THE TIME, and expect it to thrive. That just doesn’t make sense…even to my task-addled brain.
This is a example of a beautiful, well-maintained system at homeostasis. 
This is not. 🤔
“Unconscious competence” just means something you do so well you don’t have to think about it or be intentional about it most of the time. For instance, most of us don’t have to think about walking or eating to do it correctly–so we don’t. There are times where you may be forced to pay more attention to navigate a bit of tricky terrain, but in general, you can let your mind wander without ill effect. In terms of maintaining personal homeostasis, some people are highly skilled and can do it without conscious effort. I can’t–I am still learning this skill, so I need to be intentional, plan, and think about it quite a bit. But the trick is, everyone puts effort into it. Some of us just navigate unconsciously and competently, others competently and consciously, and still others with more or less competence and awareness.
All that to say, I think effort can make you miserable because pain is our organism’s way of waking us to the fact that we need to put effort into returning to homeostasis. It’s not, for example, because I’m a little b****. Pain is a bio-psychological wake-up-call. We can try to return to homeostasis healthily or unhealthily; competently or incompetently; we can cover up our screaming sun with ice cream or TV or sex; we can even ignore our needs altogether. When the stressor is great, the effort it takes to get back into homeostasis is also great, which is why brains (and the people wielding them) sometimes want to take a short-cut and just ignore the stressor, or some how get rid of it without properly dealing with it. Which is another thing that can make you miserable eventually: too much numbing or ignoring the things that matter.
But personally, that’s not my style. I’m not the type to ignore something. I am the type to chase stuff down and figure it the hell out. And you know what? That actually works for me pretty well. I get a lot out of that effort. That’s not the kind of effort that makes me miserable–that’s effort that brings me satisfaction. I know I’m up to the task of meaning-making and understanding the world around me, and if it’s a struggle, it’s something I feel that will be fruitful in the end, even if the path is dark and twisty at times. I do have to pace myself with any effort, but I have a lot of steam from that kind of effort because it bears fruit in my life in positive ways. Meaning-making is for me a positive experience.
But do you know the kind of effort that really does kick my ass? What drags me down and makes me miserable? What is a huge waste of time but I’m terribly bad at not getting sucked down the effort rabbit hole?
Letting go. Oh, boy, letting go. Such a late bloomer to the idea of letting go. I jokingly told a friend last year that they needed to put me in remedial forgiveness school since I am absolutely stupid about the whole thing. Let me tell you–I had no idea why one should let go of anything or even that one should let go of anything, so, quite naturally, I did not let go of anything.
And I paid for that unconscious choice with a lot of stress, anxiety, and useless effort and worry poured into things I could not control. And I was missing out on a key spiritual practice that helps with the maintenance of personal homeostasis. I had no idea that forgiveness was actually useful. I just heard trite sermons and superficial advice on forgiveness given by people who, seemingly, had very little to forgive.
More on forgiveness in a later post…, but for now I will conclude with the reflection that for me, I don’t personally associate stupidity or sloth or laziness with happiness. But I do associate unsustainable effort with my own unhappiness, so in that way, I can recognize the two as being related.
What about you? Is there a kind of effort that is continually making you unhappy? Are you drained by a habit or practice, or by something you fear? We all get stuck in so many ways. How do you recognize when you’re stuck? Do you recognize when you are stuck? Sometimes just taking a moment and sitting with that can help lessen a habit’s grip on you. Sometimes it takes a lot of sitting before a new kind of motion is possible. Beauty invites us to pause, relax, enjoy, and reorient. Can you hear the invitation?
