The road to hell feels like heaven, and the road to heaven feels like hell.
You’ve surely heard some version of that quote. But for me, as written, it’s easier to remember in my daily life than other versions I’ve heard in the past. It’s an important idea, and it seems to be universally true of human life, based on my experience.
The only issue is that the quote implies some destination, which believe is misleading. And that reminds me of another quote, something like, “It’s not about the destination, but the journey.”
If the destination is actually the journey itself, and you’re regularly choosing to do those difficult things day to day versus the easy things that give you pleasure in the moment but don’t contribute to your life as a whole, then the mere act of doing those difficult things, although it may feel slightly painful in the moment, is actually what heaven is. Joy not just through pain, but within pain.
You can choose any time block you please for this mental exercise, but thinking of a single day is perhaps the most clarifying.
Day A: You wake up late, scroll on your phone, put all of those little household chores off to the future, order takeout, watch TV, have a few beers, then go to bed. Each of those things brought pleasure in the moment, but at the end of the day, it feels pretty bad, man. When most of your days are similar to this, after a period you’ll look around at your life and it’ll probably be kind of shitty, judging from a human lens of course (it becomes a bit tedious constantly reiterating human lens vs soul lens, but given the content of the site and where I am in my life, I think it’s necessary and I can’t see any way around it).
Day B: You wake up early, immediately tackle the most difficult task of the day, make a healthy meal (or fast, even), have a workout, handle some chores, work on some long-term projects, sit in stillness for a while in the evening instead of watching TV, and drink herbal tea instead of alcohol. Each of these choices was a bit painful to make in that its counterpart would have been much easier and more pleasurable in the moment, but when you think about the day, you feel really good about it. When most of your days are similar to this, after a period you’ll look around at your life and it’ll probably be pretty awesome.
Obviously there’s a balance to all of this and that balance is highly individual. 100% of A days probably isn’t ideal. 100% of B days is clearly not ideal. But in this era we’re living through, it’s so, so easy to have way more B days than A. Those little dopamine traps are more ubiquitous than ever.
We all know all of this, obviously. But maybe this short post* can be a helpful reminder for you.
* As I reread this and edit it post-publishing, “short post” was only true up to the point I typed those words. We are not even at the halfway point. I could edit out “short” in the last paragraph, but this seems more fun.
FYI I’m writing this from my basement office, and there are boxes and clutter everywhere. So after hitting “publish” I’m going to take my own advice and do the painful thing and tidy it up.* That painful act will lead to much more pleasure than pain because every time I come down to the basement for a period, which is many times per day, I’ll look around and feel really good about how the basement looks. The temporary pain of tidying up will be negated and far superseded by future pleasure.
*Will I though?**
**I did, and it was painful, but in the days following that painful work, I derived great joy and fulfillment every time I walked into the spacious, tidy basement just by seeing how spacious and tidy it was (and is). I netted a great amount of joy and fulfillment by doing that hour or so of painful work.
It’s funny though…writing this post can be seen as a “Day B activity”, but maybe it was actually a “Day A activity” since I was procrastinating on doing the other thing, which was cleaning the basement. So there is apparently more nuance in all of this than I originally thought 😂
P.S. As one of my more outrageous non-sequiturs* in recent memory, which if you know me is saying a lot, you’ll notice “between” was not capitalized in the title. Even though it’s a “long” word and almost all publications capitalize it for that reason alone, the fact remains that it is a preposition, and a preposition should not be capitalized in a title unless it is the very first word of the title. I will die on that hill.
* When you label something a non-sequitur, you soften the abruptness of the transition. Is that lazy? Or is it worth it for the humor? I’ll go with the latter.
P.P.S. Now that we’ve (I’ve) leapt over to the topic of grammar, here’s another thing: “whom” and “whomever”, the objective forms of the pronouns, should not always be used after a preposition. You have to consider the context, and whether the object of the preposition is a single word or several. If the pronoun who/whom is the entire object of the preposition (or more widely, the object of the sentence, but I’ll stick strictly with objects of prepositions for this lesson, just know it also applies elsewhere), then it is always “whom”. However, if the object of the preposition is several words, it is possible that the nominative form “who” should be used even if it’s immediately after the preposition. For example, “To whoever just farted, bravo!” “Whomever” would be incorrect since the object of the preposition is “whoever just farted”, and within that, “whoever” is the subject (you would say “he just farted” not “him just farted” so using “whomever” would be as wrong, which is to say extremely wrong(!), as saying “him just farted”), so the nominative form is required. To (whoever just farted)/(object of the preposition). Another example (I’m stubbornly avoiding paragraph breaks in order to keep this PPS section as one block): “From whom?” is correct. “From whomever sent it” is incorrect. You’d say “he sent it” not “him sent it”. And the one we all immediately think of, “To whom it may concern.” “Whom it may concern” is the object of the preposition, but within that, the objective form is required. Think of it this way: “it may concern he/him.” Which would you use? Obviously “him”. So “___ it may concern” requires the objective form, “whom”. As a general rule, if you are unable correctly to employ (notice I resisted the urge to splice the infinitive) the proper use of who/whom, then just always use “who”. Using “who” when “whom” is required is forgivable. Using “whom” when “who” is required is truly unforgivable in every instance. On that note, although I am well above average when it comes to grammar, I know there are even more subtle nuances of which I’m unaware, nuances that go beyond stylistic, conscious choices (in which case it’s acceptable to deviate from proper grammar). So if you happen to be one of the truly elite, a member of the top-tier group of humans more advanced than I in the titillating field of grammar, I would sincerely appreciate your elucidation whenever and wherever you feel inclined to grace me with it. I will end today’s grammar lesson with this:
P.P.P.S. I go through periods where I enjoy microdosing psilocybin a few times per week for a month or two at a time. This happens to be one of those periods, and today happens to be one of those, for better or worse, not-so-rare days where I misjudge the dose and it teeters just above the subperceptual level required to be considered a microdose, which would explain a lot of the above.
P.P.P.P.S. I am now certain, more than an hour after starting this post, that this was a “Day A” activity. Shit.
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