Stephen Cope Quote on Engaging With Life Rather Than Retreating—On Doing What’s Meaningful Rather Than Fun

“At the end of life, most of us will find that we have felt most filled up by the challenges and successful struggles for mastery, creativity, and full expression of our dharma in the world.  Fulfillment happens not in retreat from the world, but in advance – and profound engagement.”

Stephen Cope, The Great Work Of Your Life

Beyond the Quote (64/365)

After receiving a thunderous round of applause for a speech he gave, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson was asked if he was having fun giving speeches and talking about important intellectual topics.  When he replied, “No,” I was caught off guard.  I couldn’t understand how he could so eloquently CRUSH an hour and a half long speech, do it in a way that was so well received by the audience, laugh and joke throughout, and admit that he didn’t have fun while doing it?

The atypical answer of course, would have been, “Yes” by just about any other speaker.  What he later explained, however, was that fun is for kids at an amusement park—what he was doing was taxing, required a lot of hard work and focus, but was meaningful.  And fun versus meaningful is an important distinction to make.

Fun is forever fleeting, never ending, pleasure seeking while meaning is deeply felt, never forgotten, long-lasting reward.  What will fill us up the most isn’t fun—it’s the challenges and successful struggles for mastery, creativity, and expression as Cope mentions above.  We get filled up when we’re working hard to master a set of skills that requires intense deliberate practice.  We get filled up when we get so good at a set of skills that we can creatively express ourselves in unique and remarkable ways.  We get filled up when we share with the world our work that deeply challenged us, took us a long time to make, and sometimes even made us cry, but that we saw through to the end.  Just messing around with skill development and only ever trying to have fun isn’t going to lead to that long-term satisfaction that you get when you do what’s meaningful.

The problem with “fun” is that it follows your moods and all your moods ever want to do is seek pleasure and avoid pain in the moment.  Your moods want to sit on the couch—not exercise to build athletic skills.  Your moods want to eat donuts—not eat baby spinach and kale for optimal bodily performance.  Your moods want to binge on the latest TV series—not practice refining your creative endeavors.  If you avoid the pains of doing what’s meaningful in the moment and succumb to the pleasures of doing what’s fun, you’ll undoubtedly suffer long-term.

The reason that doing the meaningful work is so hard in the moment is, well, you have to essentially seek what’s painful and avoid what’s pleasing.  You have to overcome the pain of self-discipline while simultaneously avoiding the temporary pleasures that are readily available to you so that you can move forward on your path towards fulfilling your dharma—your sacred duty.  And it’s through that profound engagement time and time again that you will find that deep, long lasting feeling of reward.  And if there’s one trap in today’s world that will hold you back more than just about anything else (besides not having access to basic necessities for living), it’s passive entertainment.

Passive entertainment is the enemy of profound engagement.  Passive entertainment makes being in a vegetative state okay and it’s something that should only ever be done thoughtfully and with limits.  It’s okay to “veg out” on occasion, but the danger, of course, is that all of the time we spend passively checked out is time that we’re not profoundly engaged and in pursuit of our dharma.  Being able to fully express our dharma in the world takes courage, discipline, and initiative.

Mindless consumption of never-ending media is a trap that keeps us distracted and prevents us from exploring, engaging, creating, and ultimately, advancing in life.  To advance is to grow and growth is life.  To retreat from yourself is decay and decay is death.  Advance every day.  Take some time to “veg out” when you really need it, but never let a day go by when you don’t work on what’s meaningful in some way, shape, or form.  Our life is too short.  Our time is too limited.  And our potential is too vast to leave untapped.

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This post became the introduction for: 12 Illuminating Stephen Cope Quotes from The Great Work Of Your Life on Mastery and Fulfillment

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