What's the Point?

Think Tank #74

Why do you do what you do?

It’s a pretty vague question that differs based on ‘what you do’ is. But if you zoom out far enough, it becomes very general.

Why do you do anything?

This question comes up all the time when thinking about what it means to be happy. A common conception of happiness is that it is the cessation of suffering—a day off of work, if you work all the time, or a day out and about, if you spend a lot of your time bored in the house. Feeling ‘normal’ is amazing after a period of sickness, but it doesn’t really do that much for us on a normal day.

It’s an interesting thought, but it is not all that compelling as a catch-all definition. Falling in love, for example, makes people very happy. Perhaps this can be conceptualized as ‘the alleviation of the suffering of loneliness,’ but how jaded is that?

Isn’t defining something only as a negative kind of a cop out, anyway?

Happiness can be the alleviation of suffering. It can also be the introduction of some pleasurable stimulus. What happiness isn’t is staleness. It is the result of some action. Some kind of change.

Sometimes people get lazy. Things don’t work out exactly the way we want to and we start despairing, sitting around wasting time instead of doing what we love, grumbling What’s the point of doing anything, anyway?

Perhaps our ‘life’s work’ isn’t fun in the same way as a night at the bar or an expensive vacation. But it makes us happy. We’re compelled to do it.

Why?

Well, it makes us feel good after we do it. Maybe not euphoric, but content. One might say it alleviates the suffering of aimlessness.

Somehow, we’re back where we started.