Author: Isaac Morehouse

Oil and Assumptions

Not long ago there was a crash involving a train full of crude oil.  It exploded and caused a great deal of damage.  In fact, this has happened multiple times in the last few months.  Of course reporters and pundits call for more and “better” regulation – as if somehow politicians and bureaucrats have stronger incentives to prevent this horrific scene than the owners of the trains, tracks, cargo, and homes near train tracks.

Many of the same people who lament the train explosions are completely opposed to new oil pipelines.  This is a particularly extreme case of status quo bias.  If you described the two methods of transporting oil to any sane person and asked which seems better it’s hard to imagine anyone preferring trains to pipelines.  Yet those who oppose pipelines are apparently more comfortable with millions of gallons of crude being loaded onto giant contraptions that take a mile to stop and run through the middle neighborhoods and cities and busy intersections on decades old rails.  It’s been done as long as they’ve been alive, so it gets a lot less scrutiny than anything new.

Status quo bias is a major obstacle to progress.  We fall prey to it in every area of our lives. (I’ve written about my struggles with it in parenting and educating my kids).  I like to play a game to help me combat status quo bias.  I pretend I’m a visitor from another planet and have no knowledge of earth’s past and present.  I analyze a situation in this frame of mind and think of how to describe what’s going on and the different options at play.  Imagine, for example, an alien observer in a typical college classroom.  They would assume by the looks on the faces in front of them and body language that it was a penal program of some kind.  This might queue us in to how odd it is to spend so much money to put ourselves and our children through classes we are completely disengaged from and don’t enjoy.

It’s a lot of work but it’s also a lot of fun to try a neutral examination of all around us.  When you’re opposed to something new, ask yourself honestly, “compared to what?”  Size it up to the status quo, not your imagined nirvana, and you might find change is welcome.

Things We Do To Our Children

I joined Albert Lu on The Economy Podcast to talk about things we do to our children.  We discussed whether and to what extent a parent can know what’s good for a child and force them to do things for their own good, from sports to music lessons and beyond.  We also discussed the lack of student-directed learning from grade school all the way through college and the problems it creates.

Listen to the episode here.  I’m on first and then author Richard Maybury on the same topic.

Dreams and Human Sacrifice

I once had a powerful mental image of people taking their dreams, represented as newborn babies, to an altar to be burned.  It was horrific and it stuck with me.

Dreams, goals, desires, a sense of purpose and what makes you come alive; these are akin to new life.  When you have a notion of something you are inspired to do or create it’s like being pregnant.  I’ve written before about this analogy.  When you’re pregnant with an idea, you know its birth is inevitable but it still requires you to do things to tend to its growth and development, and finally the birth itself.  When an idea comes to fruition something truly new is introduced to the universe.  New life emerges.  Something that previously existed only as potentiality is now reality and has changed the sum total of opportunity in existence.

Just like in my mental image, it’s too easy to ritualistically slay our own dreams.  Whether the fetus is aborted before it’s ever born or the newborn dream is destroyed shortly after, it has the same soul-deadening effect and is equally tragic.  We come to believe that our dreams are fun playthings, but really a lot of work and mess to take care of, raise, nurture, and watch grow.  They might be more than we’re ready for.  Keeping them is really rather irresponsible.  Who are we to think we can handle these inconvenient things or really tend to a new life?  When we mature, get serious, “grow up”, we realize the silliness of the idea that we could ever birth, raise, and unleash our dreams onto the world.  We have to get real and purge ourselves of all but their memory.

Best not to let them fertilize at all.  Best to prevent the growth of the tiniest seed.  Don’t let it come to term.  If it does, put an end to it quickly, mercifully.

Perhaps this mental image is in bad taste.  In fact, I know it is.  I did not consciously construct it.  It came to me when I was a teenager and it brought me to tears.  It terrified me.  But in that moment I realized how real and important it was.  Just as grisly and awful as the notion of children being sacrificed is the voluntary destruction of dreams.

Don’t give it over.  Don’t laugh at your young idealistic self and boast of growing out of it.  Don’t join the gruesome collective ritual of dream sacrifice.  It is a life, and when a life is lost it is tragic.

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A Few Insights on Institutions and Sports

One of the reasons I love sports is the opportunity they provide to see how formal and informal institutions and norms interact to create outcomes, often surprising.  When athletics and economic thinking intersect, I’m a happy man.

An excellent article on Grantland by Brian Phillips got me thinking again about the incentives in college basketball.  Small changes in formal rules and small changes in the informal enforcement of those rules can lead to pretty big consequences.  In the case of college basketball it’s resulted in a far more painful viewing experience.  Watch some of the tournament games this year and you’ll see what I mean.  Basketball is a game of runs and big emotional momentum swings over a series of plays.  Yet instead of fast paced scoring streaks I’ve mostly witnessed a baseball-like process of a play or two followed by long pauses for TV or coaches timeouts or free-throws, followed by another play or two.

There are several possible changes that could improve the experience.  Economists Ed Lopez and Wayne Leighton in their phenomenal book, Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers discuss the origin of the shot clock.  The game was in a similar place.  The best teams were known to get a small lead and then pass the ball for several minutes at a time to run out the clock.  A sensible strategy but a horrible spectator sport.  The introduction of the shot clock dramatically improved the experience.

The shot clock is an example of a new formal rule.  Mike Munger and Russ Roberts talk about not just formal but informal rules and norms in sports in one of my favorite EconTalk episodes.  We tend to assume the order around us, in the world as in sports, is the result of formal rules and enforcement, but more often there is a far more powerful substrate of informal norms and expectations with their own unique enforcement mechanisms.  Fights in hockey, or fake fights in baseball are great examples, as is the social approbation faced by teams who run up the score at the end of an inevitable victory in football, or those who continue to foul the opposing team when trailing by double-digits in the waning seconds of a basketball game.

What I like about the Grantland article is that it touches on formal and informal institutions in its analysis of what’s happening to college basketball.  It’s not only the number of timeouts allowed and the defensive rules (formal), it’s also the way refs choose to call fouls and coaches choose to reign in improvisation by players (informal).  The article went further than this.  It had some profound insight into something even more fundamental than formal and informal institutions.  It touched on the beliefs of fans, players, coaches, officials, and everyone involved.  It’s not only the rules written on paper, or the unwritten rules in our heads that create these outcomes.  The beliefs we have about the game and the rules create the context within which all these institutions must operate.  Beliefs are the ultimate binding constraint on what kind of institutions can exist.

In the case of college basketball, Phillips argues that we all know deep down it’s a professional affair the goal of which is entertainment, yet none of us wants to admit this to ourselves or publicly.  We wrap it in the cloak of character building, preparation for life, team-work, and a lot of old-timey notions about young men getting exercise for their bodies to compliment the mental exercise of a college education.  It’s not that sports don’t do these things or offer no life lessons.  Far from it.  It’s that the primary goal of sports is to make money like any other enterprise, and in our society the great lie we all pretend to believe is that self-interest is inferior to altruism as a motive (even though the beneficial outcomes of self-interested behavior far exceed all the altruism in human history).  We have to keep up the fiction that college athletics is not primarily a moneymaking entertainment enterprise.

Lots to think about on this topic, but I think the insights about the role of our beliefs (and the contradictory nature of our stated vs. revealed preferences) in shaping institutions which shape incentives which result in outcomes is powerful.  For the future of sports and society as a whole.

The Need for Structure

The most common argument for authoritarian schooling is the need for structure.  Structure is crucial to any kind of success and young people need to learn it.  I could not agree more.  Which is precisely why I find school so problematic.

If you cannot make and live by a schedule and learn to prioritize and execute on activities you will have a difficult time creating value and meaning.  If you want to learn how to create your own structure the sooner you exit environments where the structure is provided for you the better.

Schooling provides structure and the external stimulus to follow it.  The mental muscles and willpower to create one’s own structure atrophy.  I’ve seen young people enter amazing work experiences where they have tremendous amounts of autonomy with their hours, where they work, what kinds of work they want to do, and in what ways.  These are enviable jobs.  Yet these young people are stressed and unproductive.  They yearn for more externally imposed structure because they are incapable of creating their own.  They want to be told what to do because that is how they have always achieved; not by setting their own goals and exploring and testing their own means, but by jumping through hoops set up by self-proclaimed authorities.

Managing one’s own time, setting one’s own goals, and creating one’s own routines are so very important they cannot be left to schools.  They are impossible to learn by having someone else do it for you. F.A. Hayek said of the economy, “The more the state “plans”, the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.”  Schools make planning harder for the individual by doing it all for them.

The sooner you learn to create your own structure in environments where no one will provide it for you the better.  The sooner you learn how to operate where all that matters to others is the value of your outputs and no one cares how you produced it the better.  Get to know yourself.  Learn to be alone with yourself.  Learn to manage yourself.  If you don’t someone else will be happy to manage you.  Then you might find yourself wondering why your life doesn’t feel like your own and living feels only partly alive.

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The Myth of Misanthropy

It’s normal to hate people.  Everyone hates people.  Fortunately, there is no such thing as people.  There are only individual persons.

There are no classes, groups, nations, or any other collective capable of acting or believing.  Only individuals love, hate, lie, steal, give, create, think, and act.  Collectivism is a convention of language, but it is probably the most dangerous paradigm in human history.  Not just because it has led to massive violence in the hands of mobs and states, but because of what it does to the individual.  It let’s us get sloppy in our thinking.

We like to collectivize because it lets us avoid responsibility and accountability.  I can say I hate people and that people are guilty of all manner of crimes and deserve what’s coming to them.  But if I’m forced to point out a single, actual individual that I hate and believe ought get it, things get very uncomfortable.  I want to place blame on a fictitious entity and get the self-righteous satisfaction of setting myself above it (while simultaneously benefiting from the false humility of lumping myself in with it) without any sort of repercussion.

If you find yourself angry at humanity it’s instructive to dig a little deeper.  It’s often not the millions of individual actors pursuing their own ends that cause annoyance as much as certain phenomena and patterns that result from these interactions.  Those are the result of the norms, rules, institutions, and incentives faced by the actors, and those can often be altered or worked-around.  It’s not people that cause traffic jams or bad movies, but individual persons responding to incentives and seeking satisfaction.  Maybe you can change the incentives or introduce new ones?

De-collectivising doesn’t necessarily make you any happier, but it can focus your discomfort onto real entities that are changeable or avoidable.

Some Excellent Work on Education and Schooling

My friend and colleague Zak Slayback has had a wonderful series of blog posts about education, schooling, testing, unschooling, and many other fascinating and important topics in that area.  I cannot recommend them enough.

Ways to Think About Schooling Part 1

Ways to Think About Schooling Part 2

What is the Purpose of Childhood?

Let’s Abolish Childhood

Hayek and Camus Walk Into a School

Deschooling Myself

How “Below Average” Kills Dreams

“Would I Put Myself Through This?”

A Brief Defense of Playing as Learning

Zak is continuing to churn out some great stuff on these topics, so I encourage you to frequent his blog.  It’s been very interesting for me to see someone a decade my younger, with no kids of his own, and who by all measures was the apex of schooling success come to the same conclusions I have reached about schooling and childhood.  There is something very exciting about the synchronicity of someone else discovering similar books and ideas as you do the same, independent of each other.

What Liberal Arts Education Misses

I’m a big fan of liberal arts education.  Not in the classical sense of churning out dutiful citizen soldiers, but in the modern sense of a broad exploration into the humanities rather than a narrow vocational specialization.

The dichotomy between learning for “work” and learning “for its own sake” is ridiculous.  All meaningful learning has an end desired by the learner, whether to have fun or gain knowledge that helps earn money or both.  Liberal arts education is incredibly valuable as a tool to sharpen thinking and broaden the mind.  Despite all the names given to the disciplines therein, it all really boils down to the master discipline of philosophy.  Philosophy is valuable if for no other reason than that we all have a philosophy whether we want to or not.  It’s either examined or unexamined, and we are better at achieving our goals and ends if we examine our philosophy.

Still liberal arts education has a huge, gaping hole.  It’s not that it doesn’t teach enough hard skills or vocational specialization.  One could argue those are something that could be learned on top of a liberal arts foundation for those who want to master a particular skill.  Yet it is true that liberal arts education often makes it hard for individuals to bridge this gap between general critical thinking and particular ways they might apply it to create a meaningful life and career.  The missing piece is something a little more concrete than liberal arts but a little more abstract than vocational skill.  It’s an understanding of value creation.

Value creation is the only thing that matters when it comes to involvement in commercial life.  This is where philosophy meets action.  This is where theory meets practice.  An entirely pragmatic practitioner who only performs tasks may find herself flustered with limited career options just as easily as an abstract theorist who doesn’t know how to concretely practice his ideas.  The pragmatist misses the fact that it’s not just getting your hands dirty that brings career success, but creating value for others, which may or may not correlate to how many hours you work or how much you master a particular skill.  The theorist misses the fact that all the clear thinking in the world about the nature of people and the universe won’t put bread on the table unless they can translate it into something of value to others and exchange with them.

A truly powerful liberal arts education would include learning value creation.  What it is, and more importantly, how to do it.  The thing about value creation that differs from other things learned studying liberal arts is that it cannot be learned by intellectual examination alone.  You have to do it.  You have to enter the messy marketplace and bump into other humans with unique goals and desires and find a way to bring something of value to exchange.  If philosophy begins with ‘know thyself’ then working for pay is one of the most philosophical activities possible.  Getting others to voluntarily part with their resources because you can create something they value more will reveal more than you can imagine about yourself, your desires, habits, and unknown abilities you never would have guessed are valued by others.

It shouldn’t stop with merely performing the action.  Reflection and dissection of what’s happening will take you to the next level.  All the best entrepreneurs are deeply philosophical people.  They don’t merely work and try stuff and suddenly get lucky when people value something they created.  The analyze why, how it might be made better, what fundamental causes brought about success, etc.  They get to know whether their key value was the big idea, the management and execution, the network of talent, the sales job, or some combination.  This allows them to replicate success by focusing on the areas with highest return.

Philosophy is known for thought experiments, but the market is where its field experiments take place.  The most powerful liberal arts education is one that includes the study and practice of value creation.  This could mean digging into ideas in the humanities while simultaneously working at a company and trying to make it and yourself more money, not just as a practical but a philosophical exercise.  I’ve never understood people who’ve studied for decades but never entered the marketplace to exchange.  Perhaps it’s a carry-over from the Greek’s high-minded condescension towards merchants, but an attitude that treats value creation as beneath contemplation is impractical and illogical.

This passion for theory and big ideas and liberal arts combined with the thrill of value creation in the marketplace is what animates Praxis and what gets me up and working every day.  I’ve gotten to the point where I do not have any way to distinguish work from study.  In the office I’m as likely to be reading Seneca as going over an expense report.  I see both as equally important for my long term success and happiness.

We don’t need Plato’s philosopher kings.  The worst thing is to confer the use of force upon smart people who leave the production to others.  We could use more philosopher merchants who constantly examine themselves and seek to understand the world while testing their ideas in the voluntary marketplace of goods and services; who imagine a better world and then go out and create it themselves.

What if it Was You?

What would you do if the US economy hit rock bottom?  I mean real rock bottom.  Not like the dot-com or housing bust.  More like perpetual, long-term, no end in sight economic stagnation where grinding poverty was the norm.  If the average wage dropped below half of what it is today.  If you were only able to earn 12, 10, or 8 thousand a year no matter how hard you worked.  If there was no upward mobility and no prospect for a better life.  If your family lived in a house built mostly from pallets and scrap sheet metal and you had to pirate your electricity.  If sickness was frequent and medical care unreliable at best.  Try to imagine a US like that.

Meanwhile a nearby developed country is doing great.  They can’t hire enough workers.  Just moving there and doing the same thing you’re doing now will double your income immediately, improve your family housing and health, and provide ample opportunity for moving up over time for both you and your kids.  Your good friend did it.  Your brother did it.  They are living in paradise compared to what your family lives in.  Businesses there want to hire you, landlords want to rent to you, your kids want to go there.

Would you stay or would you go?

Would going make you heroic or criminal?

There is no room in a humane society for immigration restrictions.

It’s Not About You

The other day I saw a post on Facebook about the need to rethink the practice of men holding open the door for women, as it carries some implications that might be demeaning to women.  An interesting discussion that could be illuminating.  I scrolled through the comments to see people’s take and instead of arguments for or against the practice it was primarily posts like, “Well I hold the door for people and they thank me”, or, “I do (or do not) like it when people hold the door for me”.

This is not an uncommon scene on social media.  A broad argument or discussion topic is raised and everyone immediately refers to his or her own situation as proof for or against.  I’ve done it.  You probably have too.  There can be value in your perspective and your experiences may play a part in shaping the discussion, but when the first thing someone says in reply to a general argument is the word “I”, it’s really hard to get much further with a fruitful discussion.  It’s no longer about whether the practice of holding doors has more pros than cons, now it’s about whether the commenter is right or wrong, good or bad.  It’s too personal, too sensitive, and there’s no room for mental expansion or transformation.

I’ve tried to adopt the practice in any kind of debate or discussion of no self-references.  Even if I have a unique perspective or have experienced something related to the topic strongly, I don’t let myself use it.  I try to think about what my core idea is and lay out a clear case for it without any appeal to my own authority.  It’s a huge challenge, but when I stick to it I become a clearer thinker and it has the added bonus of making me less emotionally involved in the discussion.  (I don’t always stick to it!)

If someone were to say pet funerals are silly and you had a pet funeral as a child that meant a great deal to you, could you help someone see merit in the idea without immediately letting them know it helped you?  The minute you make it about you learning stops, because no one wants to offend.  Discussion becomes personal attack by default.  The chance for broadening horizons essentially ends, even though you may earn some sympathy and get someone to shut up.

Imagine every article, post, and argument you see not being about you, even if it’s about a topic very close to home.  Think about its premises and conclusion and what it fails to account for.  See if you can lay out your own ideas and agreement or objection without appeal to your experience or emotion.  If you can there’s a chance all parties will learn new things.  An added bonus, if someone in the discussion discovers that you have personal experience to draw from that makes you particularly passionate about a position, but chose not to build your argument around it, they will gain a tremendous amount of respect for you and your idea.

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The Danger of “I’m the Exception”

Everybody thinks public schools are in horrible shape.  But everyone also thinks their particular school or district is really good.  Congress has ridiculously low approval ratings and everyone thinks they’re a bunch of crooks and liars.  But everyone thinks the individual congressperson they voted for isn’t that bad, certainly better than the rest.  Everybody knows they house always wins in the long run, but how many people have told you they always break even or come out ahead at the casino?

When you clearly identify institutional and social problems for the public at large, but find yourself always somehow the exception, perhaps you aren’t looking closely or honestly enough.  Perhaps you have applied blinders in order to normalize your own past and present.  Perhaps the conclusion if applied consistently would be too much to deal with because it would leave you culpable in an admittedly bad system, process, behavior, or norm.

There really are exceptions to general rules and observations.  Just be careful if you find yourself in the exceptional position often.  You might be the dupe.

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(What) I Think, Therefore I Am (Able to Do)

This is an excellent article that provides a synopsis of the work of Carol Dweck.  I highly recommend it.  The core insight is simple: those who believe their intelligence and personality are malleable and something they have the power to shape and alter are able to sustain success, rise to challenges, and recover from failure.

It doesn’t really matter whether personality and intelligence are changeable.  Believing that they are creates a better mindset for dealing with the real world.  If you believe you can change yourself you won’t search for validation of what you are, you’ll try ti improve what you are.  You won’t feel defeated by failure because you can get better and try again.  You won’t feel threatened by the success of others but inspired by their example.

You can consciously cultivate a growth mindset.  There are practices and disciplines and slight alterations in your habits and use of language that can begin to chip away at the fixed mindset.  (I’ve found Martin Seligman to have some excellent resources for this.)  It’s the opposite of the silly self-esteem stuff like telling yourself you can do anything.  It’s more about taking on small challenges and overcoming them as a way to train your brain in how to succeed.

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Failure Does Not Make You a Failure

“I can’t afford to fail.”  A young person recently told me this.  He was deciding whether to try something he was really excited about, but that was new and different (not even particularly risky).  He meant it.  It was clear that he saw this as a make or break moment in his life, and it broke my heart.  You can afford to fail.  In fact, you can’t afford to avoid failure.

I’m not sure all the causes, though I believe schooling is a very deep part of the root system, but young people are terrified of failure.  It’s completely backwards.  Never in human history has there been such a soft landing.  Never has it been easier to recover.  When a business or an event or a project fails it doesn’t mean you fail.  In fact, a failed business can be the surest path to personal success.  If you don’t let it ruin you.

Failure is not catastrophic.  It’s just a part of the process of success.  You try to ride a bike and you fall down.  You try to play video games and you lose.  Kids seem able to recover from failure at these pretty easily.  Maybe because their parents don’t care and don’t show anxiety and anger and send them into remedial video game classes and summer camps.  Whatever the reason, there’s something to be taken from these failures.  Apply that same nonchalance to life.  Life is nothing but a series of games.

The desire to succeed and frustration at failure is normal and can be productive and motivating, but only when you’re doing something you know you want to be doing.  The real killer is crippling fear of failing at some arbitrary standard set by someone else, or fear of what other people will think even when you don’t really care about the end goal itself.  When exploring and learning something new, failure is to be expected.  Don’t internalize it.  Learn from it, laugh at it, and move on.

One you’ve gained some level of mastery, then competitive pressure and desire to be perfect can be helpful.  I read about a study where pool players were observed.  When they were told they were being observed and judged the amateur pool players started playing a lot worse.  The really good players started playing better.  We need a lot of judgement free space to explore and learn and decide what we like and get better at it.  Self-judgement needs to be the first to go.  After you’ve mastered something you can choose to take failure personally if it helps you and motivates you, but not before.

I think a lot of people are scared of entrepreneurship because they hear statistics about what percent of new businesses fail.  But notice what’s happening here.  You hear that a business failed, and in your mind you subtly converge the business with the founder and assume that the founder failed.  You assume if you start a business odds say it will fail, and therefore you will fail and you don’t want to fail.  But that’s not what happens.  When a business fails the people involved don’t fail.  They typically walk away with some great experience, knowledge, new connections, sometimes even money.

Stop being afraid of failure.  Stop worrying about being average or above average on some arbitrary scale created by someone besides yourself.  Freely explore and try things and learn things and get better at the stuff you love.  You’ve got to stop avoiding failure if you want to succeed.

Breaking the Once and Done Mentality

I hate to mow the lawn.  Still, I love few things more than a freshly cut and edged lawn.  I like the result, the problem is that only a few days later, it’s already visibly growing back.  That means it has to be cut again.  I want to be able to get it just right once and never have to deal with it again.  (I hate haircuts for the same reason.)

I want to do things once and move on.  I don’t like maintenance and repeated actions.  I try to carry all the grocery bags into the house in a single trip, even when it ends up taking longer and being ridiculously awkward.

I’m not going to pretend this mentality is all bad.  I think it’s a big strength much of the time.  But the main problem with it is that it creates all kinds of existential overhead.  I gets stressed just knowing something is in a constant state of limbo and not done for good.  This stress sucks, especially when you run a business.

I’ve never met a business owner who loves their current website.  It’s always, “Yeah, it’s not what it’s supposed to be.  We’re making some changes.”  Same goes for marketing copy, sales process, product, back office, etc.  Everything is a process.  You don’t just build it once.  That kind of dynamism is wonderful for customers and necessary for producers, but it can be frustrating for a build-it-once-and-move-on guy like myself.  I have to surround myself with people who enjoy the open-ended process (yet still have the ability to finish).

I can do it, and I do.  It’s necessary.  But I still haven’t learned how to do it happily.  It still stresses me out.  I guess I can start with my lawn.  If I can make my peace with the fact that grass just keeps growing back no matter how short I cut it, and embrace the rhythm and cycle, maybe I can apply that to larger things.

You’re Never Done Working Hard

Originally posted here.

One of my favorite stories is The Great Divorceby C.S. Lewis.  The plot involves residents of hell taking a day trip to heaven.  The interesting thing is that most of them don’t realize they were in hell, and don’t like it when they experience heaven.  Most choose to go back to hell.

It’s not a fire and brimstone hell, just a grey, bleak, lonely place where all the conversations and concerns are shallow.  Heaven is even less like the common vision of clouds and harps.  It is beautiful, but also terrifying, painful, and really, really hard.  The grass and trees and water are literally hard to the touch for the visitors.  Those who have been there for some time have become more substantial, and for them the blades of grass softly bend underfoot.  But the visitors are such shadowy, weak, ghost-like beings that they can hardly handle the hardness of the more realheavenly environs.  It takes time, effort, and struggle to be able to enjoy the wonders of this heaven.  In other words, heaven isn’t easy or safe, but it’s good.

We often strive to find some imagined heaven – some sort of stasis where no conflict or struggle or hard work exist – and in so doing become disillusioned by the fact that we never get there.  The thing is, I don’t think we’d actually want it if we found it.  It would look more like Lewis’s hell than heaven.  Safe, stagnant, dull.  A place where we become less real, and lose touch with what we want and who we are.

Think of the times when you are genuinely fulfilled, or in a state of flow.  Often they involve hard work and mental or physical challenges.  Even moments of apparent ease are only really enjoyable when they are earned, and when they are not indefinite, but part of a progression towards something greater still, like water stations in a marathon.

Without vision, people perish.  We need goals and challenges.  Not in order to get some reward or prize at the end, or to reach a state of rest, but to enjoy the challenges while we’re in them.  If we achieve them it’s not so we can finally be done, but so that we can set our sights still higher.  Those in the story who had been in heaven for some time were working to gain more strength to scale the mountain, and then the next thing beyond it.  Heaven was heaven – in full bloom and overpoweringly gorgeous – precisely because the growth never ceased.  Growth only happens with work.

Don’t put off enjoyment until you arrive at some imagined goal or end state.  If you arrive there, it won’t be that enjoyable.  If you don’t, you’ll have missed out on the opportunity to enjoy the process itself.  This doesn’t mean it’s just about the journey – a journey without a destination isn’t a journey.  It is about the destination, but because arrival means the ability to set out for the next, still greater destination as a new traveler who has grown through the trials of the previous leg.

Being fulfilled requires far more hard work than being dull, listless, or depressed.  But it’s worth it.

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