think about what's fun, not what's easy
notes on effort
The body is lazy. It’s an evolutionary achievement made for efficiency, made to last; small pleasures and basic needs are all that matter to it. You can push the body to burn more calories and it decides to do less to maintain equilibrium. The body adapts to make things easy.
The mind is meant to strive. When given an unlimited amount of small pleasures, it adapts and ceases to be entertained by these hedonic pleasures. It needs more complexity, more novelty, more difficulty to achieve fulfillment.
I began thinking about this while reading a manga about high school volleyball players. The chapter I was reading focused on one of the best aces in the entire country named Bokuto, who is known for both being unbelievably positive and exceptionally skilled at volleyball. In one moment, a teammate asks him how he’s so relentless in his focus on volleyball and Bokuto replies, “Think about what’s fun, not what’s easy.”
I stared at the panel for a while. I had never thought about fun and ease as opposite ends of a dichotomy before. Ease/difficulty and fun/boredom are obvious pairings, so where did this new idea fit in? I listened to Bokuto’s advice and thought about fun things and easy things.
I have fun when taking photos, when drawing pictures, when writing. But the fun doesn’t come uniformly, without hiccups. These acts of creation are mixed martial arts matches with insecurity and self-doubt, attempting to fend off the punches of the inner critic long enough to create something. This fun is hard-fought, well-earned, difficult, and only exists because of the effort it requires.
I also thought about easy things: lying in the sun in the summer, savoring juicy watermelon with Tajin at the beach, sleeping in on a Saturday. These small pleasures were enough for my lazy body, but couldn’t feed the mind.
The shortcomings in my mindset started to become evident — I had long thought of fun and effort as being opposites, avoiding extra effort in favor of the comforts of easy pleasures. I convinced myself that my body needed more rest and space, stopping photography when it felt too effortful to learn a new editing software or hanging up my running shoes after I ran my first 5K because spending more time sweating my way to a 10K felt too difficult.
My mind used to push my body more. I remember that one of the most beautiful moments of my life was atop Mount Tam in the Bay Area. My friends and I decided to go for a hike that was rated “easy,” but proved to be much more arduous, involving steep climbs up and down hills without steps or easy footholds. But after some slow hiking, we emerged into a vista. Grass rippled rhythmically to the wind across hills of green ending in the deep blue bay in the distance. Mountains and the skyline of the city by the bay lay beyond, partially erased by haze.
When I look back at those pictures, they are nowhere as beautiful as I remember. I could spend hours editing the photos but the blues aren’t as blue as they were. The greens cannot compare. There are not enough megapixels in my camera sensor to capture the pigments made by the effort of climbing the mountain that day.
Yet the memory holds.
A couple of weeks ago, my girlfriend and I spent a day and a half getting everything perfectly prepared to host a party to celebrate the start of summer and to watch the Knicks game. Our combined efforts became a homemade blueberry crumb cake, a dozen floral arrangements, a stocked fridge, games to play, and crayons to draw with.
There was an alternate world somewhere, one where we decided we wouldn’t host anyone, one where we watched the game alone at home because it was easier. But we weren’t in that world. In a full apartment, we relished the compliments on the decorations, we ate and drank together, blew bubbles and drew, played UNO, and watched the Knicks win their first championship in 53 years. The next day we barely moved from bed the entire day — tired, but fulfilled.
💧 Drops of the Week 💧
ALBUM - Withness by ANOTR - really easy to listen to, summer vibes
POEM - “Erik” by Natalie Shapero - The thing / I’ve always wondered about Houdini is whether he felt somehow / desensitized to death when it actually hit him
tired, but fulfilled is the best feeling
i often think about the effort vs enjoyment matrix