Well-being - Overrated Bullshit

I haven't written anything in the "thoughts" category for a long time, and quite a few have crossed my mind recently. Today, I'd like to share with you my thoughts on the concept of "well-being," which has been heavily "promoted" over the last few years. To put it simply, I currently consider it to be... overblown nonsense. I'll go further: I believe that the blind pursuit of this well-being can bring us much more harm than good. Besides, this topic is increasingly being raised by scientific circles because the research shows what it shows: things are supposed to be better, but they aren't at all.

I get the impression that in many places you can encounter the building of a vision of an ideal life - exactly this kind of peaceful, balanced one. According to some people, it is precisely living at a moderate pace, with a proper balance between personal life and work, that gives us fulfillment. I completely disagree with this. First of all, the very term "work-life balance" is flawed, because it puts work on a pedestal, and that shouldn't be a human being's goal in itself: work might not make sense (and that's often the case), and it doesn't have to mean sacrificing or building something good. Secondly, however, and more importantly: without effort, there is no satisfaction. It is simply absurdly obvious, and yet for some, completely unacceptable. Why? I don't know.

The last few months, the last year of my life has clearly shown me that you need to expose yourself to blows, that you cannot run away from hardships, that finally you must accept that life is completely unpredictable. If someone says that we should run away from hardships, from pain, they are simply talking nonsense. Our bodies are naturally adapted to changing conditions, and this also applies to the psychological sphere. If we try to run away from pain, from adversity, if we put on a glass dome and react to every issue only with artificial positivity like snowflakes (e.g. criticism is not allowed, arguments are bad and we should avoid them, physical pain is a problem and you have to kill it with pills, etc.), the pendulum will eventually swing back and we will land in the valley of internal despair. We won't even know why.

I also want to emphasize one very important thing here - it is one thing to push your own limits, giving 200% of yourself at work where we are truly a part, owners of something important to us, and quite another in a situation where this is demanded of us as a rank-and-file employee. In the latter situation, it makes absolutely no sense, it is plain exploitation, a manifestation of an unhealthy version of capitalism and it should be condemned. And we, of course, shouldn't agree to it, because how does it differ from a medieval tithe? I read about motivational posters in Amazon fulfillment centers with Jeff Bezos's image saying things like "Work Hard, Have Fun and Make History". What sick bullshit, just like from USSR communist propaganda. For the average worker of such a center, it is not making history, but just hard work, necessary to survive. Bezos himself can write history here, but the splendor does not spill over to the thousands of people who are actually working for the whole success of this great company. It is a different story when we create something ourselves or are part of a small team and do something together, having direct contact.

Another example is the rat experiments conducted by ethologist John B. Calhoun, who provided them with a literal "paradise on earth". Do you know how it ended? At first it was good, the colony was growing, developing. Later came a breaking point where it stopped and led to something that can be called an implosion, a behavioral sink - the created utopia collapsed under the weight of its own prosperity, some rats started being aggressive for no reason, others apathetic. The colony kept shrinking until it almost completely died out. For some reason, this strongly reminds me of current trends: the number of suicides is growing from year to year. There are more and more people with depression, and the assessment of future prospects by teenagers has never been at such a low level. In a word: we could say that thanks to technological development and thanks to some tools it is getting better and better, but in reality it is getting worse, i.e. as humans we feel worse and worse... and when we look for solace in peace, we don't find it at all.

Both from family, sports and professional life, I know perfectly well what an immense sense of happiness surviving difficult moments brings: because such things happened, happen and will happen. Sometimes by choice, sometimes due to external factors. Exposing ourselves to blows, to hardships, all this causes that not only do we become stronger in the future - thanks to this we really feel pleasure. We also reduce the risk of falling into apathy or depression. There is no point in looking for excuses, there is no point in waiting for the "best possible conditions". Life is here and now, and not in a week or a month. Anyway, if you are reading this, you probably know yourself what has happened in the world in just the last few years: expecting predictability, expecting that everything will run logically and peacefully is doomed to fail in advance. So let's not make this mistake.