Comment by thewebguyd

> I have often felt conflicted about happiness and what we should strive for in our lives.

It's the striving itself that is the source of our suffering & dissatisfaction

The reason its hard to articulate what we want is we are conditioned to think of our life as a series of targets to hit, but that striving is where we suffer. Maybe you target wealth, then you look for happiness, then you look for meaning, and it doesn't end.

Life is like a fire, you don't ask the fire what its goal is.

> We want to do hard things that make us work and that hurt a bit and frustrate us, because there is a sense of satisfaction when you persevere.

Even with this, making satisfaction the goal will turn it into another struggle or commodity to be consumed. We like hard things because the intensity forces us to be present. The striving mind stops worrying about the future or the past and you are fully present with the task at hand.

Once you can get out of the way of yourself, you realize we don't actually want a better experience, we just want to stop being distracted from the one we're already having.