We all want linear, steady growth in our lives. Some even want exponential growth if they are not easily satisfied. Many of us do not feel that we can be happy unless we are growing at all times, in all ways. We think that our bank accounts must grow, we must be getting happier, we must be praised more, we must be getting healthier, we must stop aging, we must always be beautiful or physically fit, and we must find more free time to do what we enjoy. How can anyone be happy, with so many goals and not enough time or ability to accomplish such extraordinary feats?

I have never heard of anyone who reached a point and said, “this is enough. I finally arrived.” So does that mean there is no point to arrive at? Rather than endpoints or goals to strive for, are we all actually more like the hamster on the hamster wheel? We get on the wheel, and not much is accomplished, but the next day we jump on again because we don’t know what else to do besides remaining in motion, appearing to make progress.

Ernest Hemingway said:

“Never mistake motion for action.”

Sometimes that is how we behave, though, as if mere movement indicated meaningful action. But of course, we are not hamsters, so we should have more thinking and reflective capacities.

It seems as if our very happiness is refuted by the fact that we aim to be happy. For example, have you ever been unhappy because you attempted to be happy and failed at it? You expected happiness yet did not receive it, and so this made you unhappy. Aside from that, everything was fine, and you had no other reasons to truly be unhappy.

Monetary wealth collapses on itself too. If a few people owned the vast majority of the planet’s wealth (so basically, the situation we are in), it would be quite easy for those wealthy people to amass more and more wealth by nature of their resources. Everyone else would increasingly feel as if they were poor and powerless in a rigged system. The rich are indeed getting richer, and everyone else is mostly working harder and harder to remain stagnant. Somehow with riches, we tend to carry the illusion that we are personally amassing something. But it ends up being an energy that is ultimately redistributed to others (even if that is to relatives or back to the government), just as everything else in life is.

When it comes to health, beauty, and fitness, we are also up against the clock. We can do our best to build and preserve these features in ourselves, but ultimately, all life perishes after a certain point.

If we look at the goal of life, from the universe’s perspective, at least, it appears to be death. Yes, you read the statement correctly, although it appears nonsensical. Life leads to death with 100% accuracy. So life appears to cause death. Being born appears to result in death.

So the universe is telling us that goals don’t make sense. If the universe’s goal with life is to have it die, then why? Well, with every death, life can thrive. Organic matter (or at least matter that was organic) is what living creatures eat. The more organisms die, the more other organisms can live. Perhaps the universe’s goal is to give us more life, even if that means death. However, the more life we have, the more it leads to death. If there are too many living organisms at once, then that means there is too much competition for limited resources and food, which would likely lead to rapid deaths – organisms killing each other to eat.

The universe presents us with many paradoxes, one of which is that more life leads to more death. And more death leads to more life. But ultimately, there is a balance.

And as with nature, which balances itself between life and death, I believe that a key purpose here in this life is to find our own balance and harmony. Shooting for endless growth in all areas of life is just futility. Extreme riches for one results in extreme poverty for others. Just as extreme poverty for some results in extreme riches for others. Aiming to be too healthy may, strangely enough, make your system fragile if one’s system gets used to needing the perfect combination of exercise and nutritional value at steady intervals. What happens when you do not have access to that “perfect” health routine? You will not feel so healthy.

This is why intermittent fasting appears to be gaining popularity. Stressing your system is part of what it takes to be healthy. Seeking optimization in any form, however, often works against us. The more you reach states of perfection in any facet of your life, the more ripples of flaws you will create in your life and others’ lives.

Do not get me wrong. I still aim to do my best. But I realize that doing my best requires making mistakes, faltering, learning lessons and sometimes failing to learn them, struggling to be myself, wasting time, wasting energy, repeating the same cycles of futility, aiming to help people but in some way failing, and so forth. The harder I try to do my best, the more self-defeating I may become. In just doing alright and avoiding catastrophic mistakes, I can maintain balance in more aspects of my life. If you work too hard to do your best in any single area, other areas of your life may eventually collapse.

I have heard many times about business people who had high aspirations, so they worked more and more, taking on too much. Then at some point, they had health troubles because they neglected to eat or sleep well, or they made no time for their loved ones and mental health. Then as their health faltered, they realized that they needed to cut back work, to have some form of balance in their lives. Sometimes our own nature guides us back to balance, even if we fight it.

Personally, I believe health is of the utmost importance. If we do not take good care of ourselves, we will lose our focus and be unable to make progress in the areas we find important.

Understand that the universe sets its limits. There is no such thing as endless growth in any direction. Eventually, all that is good comes to an end, just as eventually, all that is bad comes to an end. I believe the fruitful path is to seek some balance, harmony, and contentment. Seek it with yourself, your loved ones, nature, and everything.