Clickbait title: Getting what you want is not what you need.

I consider myself to be a very satiated person. I’d say as soon as I was no longer limited on screen-time by my parents, I did not have much to wish for (massive privilege!!). Importantly this does not mean I am happy all the time. And a lot of considerations of adulthood are still sneaking up on me. Not to speak of the state of the world.

I think ever since I was a child I had the instinct to protect my free time above anything else. I remember doing mental calculations in my head that my parents could not understand, where a social gathering did not just convey the cost of the action, but what I could have done instead. Now I understand that this was in part because not being solitary drains me mentally.

So a lot of my life has been a fight between the want to maximise free time and the general education track. Days where I had to study were bad, less so because studying sucked (I’m pretty good at it), but because a day became “the day I did nothing but studying”. Nowadays I am blessed that a lot of my studies are solitary and interesting. It feels less like a loss of time.

So I have succeeded, right? Finally I can be a workaholic and happy. Maybe I’ll even become one of those people who feels bad at every hobby because they could be working right now (something I currently only do when there’s an urgent task to be done). So this is a good life.

Agency

Well, it sucks. Or rather I suck. It sucks exactly because it is objectively the best thing, because I should be happier and because it could be taken from me. Some of this can probably be blamed on the hedonic treadmill, but I think it’s closer to an effect outlined by the excellent Adam Ragusea in one of his “uncle tells you about the world and life” podcast episodes.

My reinterpretation for myself is as follows: If everything is objectively aligned in your favour, the only thing you can blame is yourself. Unproductive? Must be that you are lazy. Unhappy? Ungrateful bastard. Not there for your friends? Selfish, even when you have the means.

Loss of urgency

Another metaphor often used by Ragusea is one by a tiger/lion chasing him for most of his life. And the moment that tiger/lion stops and you have the time to breathe is the first time you really have to reevaluate your life. This can be horrifying, because you may no longer recognise who you are or where you’ve gone in life. It is also very necessary long-term.

It is an open question to me if a lion chasing you can be good for you. I have done some of the projects I’m most proud of during exam season, as a forceful artistic outlet. I needed to prove to myself that life is not all just the strife I was experiencing, by creating my own fun. I used my limited free hours so effectively, I actually got more done than on an average free day.

But I don’t see how it can be healthy to be chased by the lions all day every day. Most of my periods were pierced by the resonant feeling of temporary suffering. I’m too young to truly understand the feelings, but from what I can gather, a midlife crisis can set in once you realise the lion chasing hasn’t stopped for 20 years and will continue another 20 years until you do something. The illusion of the temporary suffering has been broken.

Rebellion to do something more

I’ve heard someone describe people who make art as essentially cursed. They are cursed with the intense need to create, when others are able to just be happy with an office job. I do think stereotypes like “the corporate office drone” are often made from a lack of interest in other people’s lives. But it is probably true that some people are happier with having less to do in life. Maybe they see the day as something to be filled with keeping yourself busy, instead of me seeing a perfectly good free day emptied by responsibilities.

When my life was more desolate, when I had less control over my it, I tended to read more. Why? Because I was commuting. It was a perfect slice of the day carved out for the activity, which probably spoke to my habitual nature. But I think a big part of it was also rebellion. Reading is an activity where you immerse yourself into something you have chosen. It is more directed and measurable than daydreaming or clicking around on my phone. I think I read a lot because in large part I wanted to make sure that the end of the day I could tell myself “I may have lost all these hours to a job, but I also did a thing I want: read in this book”.

Conclusion

So am I ungrateful when I lie on bed on my phone with no goal in mind but comfort and distraction? I think both my past and future self would be nicer to me than I am. I certainly don’t think I owe anything to anyone through my mere existence.

There are legitimate reasons to just enjoy not being chased by tigers for once. It also is a good time to reflect on what you want. I do just think I worry a bit about how much I am actually enjoying this “wasted time”. It has been said many times before, but I think a lot of time on a phone is not relaxing, because that would be boring. We rather lazily search for stuff that stimulates and unsettles us just the right amount to not need to think about other things.

As has been alluded to in this article, it can be hard to not fall into self-loathing if every circumstance is aligned in your way, but you are not achieving the things you told yourself you would. Some people solve this insecurity by finding something new to blame. The more intangible the better, have you tried blaming a minority population?

Jokes aside, I think that maybe I do need some sort of enemy or a cause. Something that motivates me to get out of bed, without stressing me out when I actually deserve to relax. As my life is currently going, this might become scientific achievement. Fighting against the big nebula of things we don’t know yet. It might also end up being something else. I think normal people have children.