The Art of Making Life Harder: Why We Love to Suffer for No Damn Reason

 

You’d think after thousands of years of evolution, we’d have figured out how to stop sabotaging ourselves. 

But no—humans are master architects of unnecessary misery. We crave chaos, worship complication, and when life finally hands us peace, we panic and find a way to ruin it.

Let’s start with a brutal truth:

Most people don’t want an easier life—they want a meaningful struggle. The tragedy is, they pick the wrong battles.

We make things difficult because difficulty makes us feel alive.

You don’t feel your heartbeat when you’re safe. You feel it when you’re hunted.

You don’t feel the sharpness of your mind when you’re content. You feel it when everything’s falling apart.

Somewhere deep in our DNA, there’s a whisper that says: 

If it’s easy, it must be worthless.

So, we chase drama. We romanticize pain. We turn every molehill into a mountain just to prove we’re climbing something.

Look around.

We’ve built a world addicted to difficulty.

We take something as simple as love—the most natural human connection—and turn it into a series of emotional chess games and performative social media stunts.

We could just say what we mean. But instead, we “play it cool,” pretend we don’t care, and then wonder why everyone’s miserable.

We take something as simple as working out—move your body, eat decently—and mutate it into a cult of overcomplication.

Supplements. Fads. Influencers. “Secret hacks.”

We don’t want results. We want rituals that look like suffering so we can feel righteous about our failure.

And don’t even get me started on career.

We chase job titles we hate, buy things to impress people we don’t respect, and call it ambition. 

Then we collapse under the weight of our own invented burdens and cry “burnout” as if the fire wasn’t lit by our own hands.

The Greeks had a word for this—hubris.
It’s when man thinks he’s smarter than the gods.
And we are guilty of a modern version: 

We think we’re smarter than simplicity.

But simplicity is terrifying because it exposes us.
If the answer is simple—if it’s you that’s the problem—then there’s nowhere left to hide.

You can’t blame the economy, your boss, your ex, your parents, or “society.”

You can only blame the face in the mirror.

And most people would rather build a labyrinth than face that reflection.

Here’s the soldier’s truth:
War is mostly boredom punctuated by chaos.
It’s not the gunfire that breaks men—it’s the waiting, the endless overthinking, the inability to act simply when the moment comes.

We live like that every day.
Our modern wars are fought in our heads—imaginary scenarios, phantom arguments, catastrophes that never happen.

We complicate everything because our minds are restless beasts. Simplicity feels like death to the ego, and we’ll do anything to keep that ego alive, even if it means destroying ourselves.

Let me give you something to think about:
Every unnecessary problem in your life is a tax you pay for refusing to accept reality.

Reality is always simple.

But you? You want it to be poetic. You want it to mean something.

You want your suffering to be art.

So you dramatize. You resist. You build stories around your pain until it becomes your identity. And before you know it, your entire existence is one long, exhausting novel titled “Me vs. Everything.”

Here’s the philosopher’s dagger:

Simplicity is not the absence of meaning—it’s the presence of clarity.
When you simplify, you don’t lose depth; you lose illusion.

The monk, the warrior, and the true artist all understand this: 

Discipline is the ultimate simplicity.

They strip away everything that isn’t essential, not because they hate difficulty, but because they reserve their suffering for what actually matters.

You think you’re being deep by complicating things.
But depth isn’t found in confusion—it’s found in precision.

It’s the clean cut of truth, not the messy wound of overthinking.

So ask yourself tonight:

• What problems in your life are real, and which ones are self-made prisons?
• How much of your “stress” is just fear wearing a fancy costume?
• How much of your “complexity” is just cowardice disguised as sophistication?

Because here’s the scary part—

If you stripped your life down to only what’s necessary, you might discover you’ve been fighting ghosts.

And if you stopped fighting, you might have to face the silence you’ve been running from.

Call to Action:

Tomorrow morning, when you wake up, do something dangerously simple.

• Say what you actually mean.
• Make the damn decision.
• Stop waiting for perfect conditions.
• Stop polishing excuses.

The next time you catch yourself saying “it’s complicated,” stop—and ask, “Or am I just afraid of the simple answer?”

Life isn’t meant to be easy. But it also isn’t meant to be this hard.

We made it that way.

Now it’s time to unmake it.

Final Thought:

The bravest act left in this world isn’t to fight harder—it’s to stop making war with yourself.

Simplicity is not weakness. It’s the highest form of strength.