Why a Good Life Is Not Necessarily an Easy Life

We often talk about improving our lives as though the objective were obvious.

Less stress.

More money.

Greater security.

More leisure.

Fewer problems.

There is nothing wrong with wanting any of these things. Given the choice between unnecessary suffering and comfort, most sensible people would choose comfort.

But there is a difference between making life better and making life easier.

And confusing the two can lead us somewhere unexpected.

Comfort Has Value

Human beings have spent thousands of years reducing unnecessary hardship.

We built houses to escape the weather.

Developed medicine to reduce suffering.

Created machines to remove physical labour.

Designed technologies that allow tasks once requiring hours to be completed in seconds.

These are genuine achievements.

Difficulty has no inherent moral value.

There is nothing virtuous about suffering simply because suffering is difficult.

Yet removing every difficulty would not necessarily produce a flourishing human life either.

Because some of the things we value most exist precisely because they require something from us.

Friendship requires effort.

Competence requires practice.

Trust requires consistency.

Knowledge requires curiosity.

Physical strength requires resistance.

Character requires choices.

Remove every demand and we may also remove many of the conditions through which human capacities develop.

Flourishing Is Different From Feeling Good

This distinction was familiar to the ancient Greeks.

The idea of aretē is often translated as virtue, but it also carries the sense of excellence: something fulfilling its nature or function well.

From that perspective, a good life cannot simply mean experiencing the greatest possible amount of comfort.

The more interesting question becomes:

What allows a human being to flourish?

Sometimes flourishing feels good.

Sometimes it does not.

Learning something difficult can be frustrating.

Taking responsibility can be uncomfortable.

Telling the truth can carry consequences.

Leaving something familiar can be frightening.

Yet these experiences can contribute to growth precisely because they demand the exercise of capacities that comfort alone does not require.

The Resistance Is Sometimes the Point

Consider physical exercise.

If we progressively remove resistance from a muscle, it does not become stronger.

It becomes weaker.

The resistance is not an unfortunate obstacle standing between the muscle and development.

It is part of the mechanism through which development occurs.

Something similar can happen psychologically.

A difficult conversation may develop courage.

A failure may develop judgement.

Responsibility may develop competence.

Uncertainty may force us to think.

This does not mean every hardship contains a hidden gift.

Some suffering is simply destructive.

Some environments diminish people rather than develop them.

The challenge is therefore not to glorify difficulty.

It is to distinguish fruitful difficulty from pointless suffering.

One develops capacity.

The other merely consumes it.

A Different Measure of Progress

Modern life gives us increasingly sophisticated ways of measuring convenience.

How quickly can something be delivered?

How few clicks does a task require?

How much effort can automation remove?

Those are useful questions.

But perhaps they should be accompanied by another:

What capacities are we developing in the process?

A technology that removes meaningless repetition may free human beings to do something more valuable.

That is progress.

A system that removes every opportunity to exercise judgement may produce efficiency while quietly reducing competence.

Those outcomes are not the same.

The same applies personally.

A life constructed entirely around avoiding discomfort can gradually become smaller.

We stop attempting things we might fail at.

Avoid conversations that might challenge us.

Remain within environments we have already mastered.

Comfort increases.

Capacity does not.

The Aim Is Not Hardship

None of this means we should deliberately make our lives difficult.

Hardship is not the objective.

Development is.

The question is whether the challenges we encounter are contributing to something worth becoming.

That changes the way difficulty is understood.

Instead of asking only:

“How can I make this easier?”

we might occasionally ask:

“What is this asking me to develop?”

Sometimes the answer will be nothing.

The obstacle should simply be removed.

But sometimes the answer may be patience, courage, competence, honesty, judgement or resilience.

And removing the difficulty would also remove the opportunity to develop it.

Perhaps, then, a good life should not be measured by the absence of resistance.

It should be measured by whether the resistance we encounter contributes to our ability to flourish.

Comfort has its place.

So does challenge.

Wisdom lies in knowing the difference between suffering that diminishes us and difficulty through which we become more capable of living well.

From the series: Reflections on Virtue

This article forms part of an ongoing exploration of purpose, institutions, relationships and human flourishing adapted from Virtue: A Unified Theory by Carl Parry.