Your Prescription for Purpose
Every orifice of life exposes you to the two shallow yet polarized cultural religions of our age: hyperconvenience and the glorification of suffering. We are all force-fed endless ad campaigns pushing gadgets that make the easiest tasks even easier, “wellness” influencers who preach about “protecting your peace” by ditching all things inconvenient, bigoted promotions for expensive subscriptions to alpha male virtual schools that promise to “help you escape the matrix,” and fireside chats of cartoonishly evil tech moguls promising that we won’t have to work if AI replaces the entire human race.
We, like every living thing, feel the impulse to avoid pain as a means of self-preservation. Humans are both too smart and too limited for our own good, though, and we have egotistically centered our economy around eliminating any signs of friction. Every day, established and budding companies sell us products or services to numb anything uncomfortable. We are dangerously taught that we should never wait, feel bored, digest emotionally complex situations, or even apply any physical or mental effort.
Trapped in this WALL-E energy bubble, we find ourselves cushioned into oblivion. Suffering remains inevitable, but we are no longer equipped with tools that would help us cope. When it comes around (loss, failure, sickness, heartbreak, etc.), we can no longer let go and move forward. We are absolutely horrified to predictably discover that a constant state of euphoric happiness is absolutely utopic.
After you finish ordering your groceries online, sexting with someone on repackaged dating apps, and using an LLM to write your breakup texts for you, you might try to confront the downsides of life. Surprise! You find yourself dug into a deep pit of despair. The worst part is that getting back out would require even more effort.
Meet the next species of misery: the aestheticization of pain. We watch a few movies centered around beautiful yet purposeless tragedy and follow sad indie singers with identical sound on Instagram–suddenly, we’re all tortured poets. Pop culture jumps in, helping us avoid this discomfort and presenting us with the easier option of simply falling in love with pain. Since it's nicer to put on a show and strip everything of signifying nuance, we are lulled into a similar state of stagnation. Change has turned into an entirely foreign concept.
Our modern culture has left us with a broken compass for dealing with struggle. No wonder we feel perpetually misunderstood and personally lost. Bouncing bitterly between both sides, we voluntarily isolate ourselves into submission during an unprecedented loneliness epidemic. If we boldly assume that humans are capable of more than just rolling two boulders up the same mountain endlessly, we can start deconstructing the myth behind both of these narratives. Suffering is not something we can permanently escape, and it is definitely not something to brand as a personality trait.
Overcoming this lurking sense of existential doom means revisiting an age-old question…what is our purpose? To even answer half of that question, we have to make sense of our human relationship with pain. For the sake of building a sensible framework, it is necessary to split suffering into two categories: absurd suffering and self-imposed suffering.
Absurd (and typically unjust) suffering is the stream of suffering we are all dealt with, regardless of our own actions. Being born into an oppressed class, facing bad health, grief, and simpler, random tragedies like getting food poisoning before a highly anticipated event, all fall under this category. Varying in degree, every human must go through forms of absurd suffering and madly puzzle the unpredictable rules of the universe. In his reimagining of the tale of King Sisyphus, Albert Camus rightly explained that most of our experiences are determined entirely independent of our will and expectations. Absurdity is most importantly defined by being entirely independent of what is “fair.”
If this suffering is what we are condemned to, shouldn’t we just call it a day and stick to running into or away from pain? Definitely not. Instead, we should take proportionate time to mourn the absurd suffering we personally face and ultimately move past it. The gift of absurdity is that it does not discriminate. Building community, showing compassion to those struggling around us, and resisting when possible (i.e., against manmade oppressive forces) help us cope healthily with absurd suffering. In turn, we give chaos a purpose by neither minimizing nor romanticizing the cruelest corners of inevitability. Life is not a feel-good film, but power can be found from within.
The second and simpler form of suffering, namely self-imposed suffering, is what actually leads us to meaning. Everything we decide to want is manifested through the sacrifice we choose to endure. We sacrifice time and comfort to become the best at a sport, to chase after all our dreams and career, and to nurture all our interpersonal relationships. These goals can only be unlocked with a certain level of privilege, but the principle applies regardless. Sometimes, sacrifice can be as simple as staying alive for just one more day, one day at a time.
It is entirely valid to challenge the significance of self-imposed suffering when you realistically weigh in the effects of absurd suffering. Success is seldom a given, and life really likes to stop us dead in our tracks. Discomfort is empty with too much noise and without context. The counter to this argument is, firstly, remembering how to cope with absurd suffering, and, secondly, to reassess what matters enough for further sacrifice as time passes. When we must let go of a goal after the stars refuse to align, we sleep better knowing we gave it our best. If we never try at all, we find ourselves restless while riddled with regret. Building a legacy just means trying. “Purpose” really is that simple; the work is not.
This brings us to the most radical part of this argument for a culture obsessed with finding purpose in endless maximization of emotion. Devotion, not happiness nor suffering, defines who we are. Start by accepting what lies out of your control while refusing to bury your emotions. Choose who and what you love, and show up even when it gets difficult, especially after you mess up. Finding strength means accepting the challenges and roadblocks that stand in front of whatever we want to live for.
So no, permanent ease or agony is not our idealistic fate. We can’t be reduced to initial reactions and urges. The only challenge left is deciding to walk forward and stay loyal to something bigger than yourself. Hope is the most powerful resource. Devotion is the only way to reclaim it. It's time to snap out of the trance.
WRITTEN BY
Giulia
As the world seems to hurl past me, I find myself compelled to catch up. A way to stay present for me is by appreciating art, from fashion to cinema to music. This means making art accessible and thus engaging readers, as sharing my love for culture is one of my greatest passions in life.
