Up for the challenge?
It’s incredible to think about how revolutionizing hands have been for evolution. Before hands, very few animals were able to intricately manipulate objects and no animal could ever imagine doing some of the things primate hands can do. Of course, hands evolved because of the necessity to grasp trees but as we stepped out of the forests our distant ancestors found other things to do with their hands. Surely our brains have just as big of a role to play, but combined, our evolving brain and versatile hands allowed us to overcome many challenges. Making weapons and designing tools took us from an average place in the animal kingdom to being global dominators. We were able to overcome extreme weather by making clothes, we were able to build, cook, farm, and eventually write. In other words, the biggest advantage hands and a growing brain gave us was the ability to create challenges in our minds and then overcome them using our reason and hands. As we developed, our challenges became not only physical but mental, since the beginning of written history we see attempts to find a meaningful life or how to overcome suffering, and today we are able to combine all kinds of mental and physical challenges. Therefore the potential to seek new challenges seems to be one of those things that separates us, not only from other species but also between each other as members of the same species.
There’s a lot of stress nowadays on being an individual. We hear so often “it’s important to be yourself” and “do what you love”. But the question is, how do I know what I love or what it means to be me? How can I be an original self if my biology, language, and culture was all handed to me since I first starting fruiting from the tree of life? Of course, from this rises an essential philosophical question of what it means to be “me”, but this is for another time. All of this handing down might of course be a good thing since we want to be influenced somewhat by the outside world so that we’re not starting from sticks and stones. We wouldn’t want to become bacteria just so we can start from the beginning of life and we wouldn’t want to start without language because we wouldn’t even be able to formulate such questions. On the other hand, we don’t want to become a faceless individual produced by a religious, political, or social ideal, by blindly following whatever is preached. Let’s suppose though, that we’re able to remain untied to any particular ideal, yet be able to extract from those ideals, whatever it is we believe to be important based on our own experiences and reasoning. How do we further shape our identity? One area of importance might just be in the way we face challenges.
Interestingly, challenges seem to grow more and more as society progresses and generally there’s a slightly negative connotation tied to challenges but we certainly wouldn’t want to get rid of challenges. If we imagine athletes, they won’t be so different in the use of proper techniques that are traditionally taught, but in the way they combine their experiences and reason against an opponent. An avid tennis player might not want to play with a beginner unless he has to or is fatigued because he isn’t presented with any challenges to make it interesting. Instead when the game becomes challenging enough the experience has the potential to force us to reinvent ourselves and when it becomes too challenging it returns to being of no use. When the challenge is fairly balanced each tennis player has a certain amount of constraints, some that are shared and some that are individual. Within these limitations, there’s an uncertainty that rises, who can overcome the limits imposed better? Of course, challenges are not fought only in the moment, but can also be a gradual chiseling towards a precise goal, such as refining one’s technique, in order to then better overcome a challenge.
The question is, why don’t avid players want to play with complete beginners knowing that they could crush their opponent? Another way to ask the question is, why don’t we design games where you press a few buttons and win? Video games are a great example of imposed rules in order to create the experience of overcoming challenges. We don’t need to put limits on video games because it’s a virtual world with endless possibilities, nevertheless, we set limits as if space/time & energy constraints applied in order to make it interesting. What we notice here is that when we give two people the same character to play (the same exact limitations) we start to see their personality based on how they equip their given skills according to the challenges provided.
Identity thus seems to be at least partly shaped in the execution of applying one’s capacities to solve challenges. One might find that objectively of course there might not be an ideal job or skill to do but there might be skills we’d like to have. How though do we decide what it is we should pursue? In other words, how do I know what hobby or job will allow me to be the best me? We can imagine two children, one child was given everything he ever asked for and the other child had to survive from an early age. Generally, I imagine one would want to be the spoiled child if thinking about it experientially, but maybe the latter if one is to weigh the worth of their life. Many of us find ourselves torn between the pleasure of life and the bittersweetness of challenges. Therefore the point might not be which challenge is going to get you into the book of the world records, unless that is of course precisely what it is you want to do, but instead entering a mindset where challenges are what it is you seek. You could be a successful cook, or a landscape photographer, or a nuclear physicist, or maybe all three but in the end, measuring life’s worth in the challenges we take and how we face them has more to say about us than the final achievements of those pursuits.
Another problem is, how do we enjoy challenges? Unfortunately, playing a video game is a different type of limitation compared to learning how to play the piano. The task can be so simple on the piano but if I never played before it might be incredibly tedious to play the most simple melody. This means that the amount of stimulation is of course a lot less than challenging yourself in a video game shooting zombies. How then do we make these low stimulation yet difficult tasks become at least to a certain extent, pleasurable? Even though I would love to present a systematic approach to finding this out I’m definitely not able to. I can only say that it’s our decisions that force us to gather all that we know in order to judge what action we should take based on our internal predictions. If the action we take doesn’t yield the expected results we are granted the possibility to include this new information into our arsenal of predicted outcomes. Failure becomes an essential tool in sculpting the details of our individuality. Therefore appreciating our failure and recognizing its value allows us to enter a mindset where challenges are embraced.
Facing challenges is definitely nothing new and even Seneca says “As long as you live, keep learning how to live.” If one chooses to keep learning to live, challenges can be equipped as a way to force oneself to reconsider what is thought to be possible. I’m not a fan of step processes or vague steps, therefore the following are not really steps or necessities, but can be used if you’re stuck on a challenge or stuck taking up a new challenge.
1. Imagine an ideal version of yourself and challenge yourself using the external world to objectify your results.
This means understanding what kind of person you’d like to be based on your reason and interests. Secondly, try to compare how your ideal self would face the challenges you fail to face or struggle with. (Remaining objective is important to not set your goals too high or too low).
2. Work on appreciating failure and seeing the benefits (Become aware of how new challenges affect you).
Failure and recognizing failure is what allows you to become a better challenge seeker and the more you enjoy the process of being challenged the more you can take up new challenges.
3. Prioritize essential challenges and don’t be afraid to drop off challenges that don’t produce fulfilling states.
If your job is challenging you this doesn’t mean you can give it up because you don’t feel good about it’s challenges, unless money is not a priority, but you can gradually move to another job that presents you with challenges you do enjoy. If a hobby is presenting you with very stressful challenges and when you overcome them you don’t feel it was worth it, drop it or find a variation of it, if you really like the field.
One might ask the question, how do we become more individual if we all become challenge seekers? If we return to our hands, we see that no one will claim you can’t be an individual because you have hands like everyone else, so we can all be individuals even if we all seek challenges. Our hands are not so unique compared to many other primates but it’s how we use them that distinguishes us entirely.
