Do you remember the last time that you told yourself that you wanted to disappear—to just crawl into a hole and stay there forever? What about moments where you felt as if you dominated the world—or moments where you genuinely felt at peace or as if you were having the time of your life? It’s these moments that make us human.
This wide spectrum of experience—the sudden change from the time of your life to a devastating experience you don’t want to relive—is what makes you whole. But it does invite the question: if life is bound for suffering and pain, why keep pushing forward instead of being “safe” and isolated?
For many, isolation is kind of like a sanctuary. It tempts you to just let go of yourself, to not care about anything, and to just shut down all communication with everyone. It feels so peaceful and quiet, yet there’s nothing to enjoy. It’s easy to think that in this little sanctuary, there is no rejection, misunderstanding, heartbreak, or betrayal.
However, if you just choose to stay in a sanctuary where you are only blinded by delusion, you lose the “time of your life” along with it. There really isn’t peace without chaos; otherwise, there wouldn’t be a contrast by which to define peace. Peace without chaos is just stagnation. This highlights the Contrast Principle: without any way to define the “presence of conflict,” there would be no reason to define an “absence of conflict.” This is a state where nothing moves, nothing changes, and nobody is challenged. To exist in a state where nothing can hurt you is also to exist in a state where nothing can move you.
When you made friends, there was a risk that you could ruin your reputation, be made fun of, and be forced to conform to things that you aren’t comfortable with. But with that risk, there is also the chance that your friends could support you when you need a helping hand, a chance that they could give you the time of your life, and a chance that they are people who you can stand proud with. That is the Hedgehog’s Dilemma: the closer we draw others for warmth, the more likely we are to prick one another with our “spikes” of imperfection.
It’s okay to think that a single mistake could ruin your life and make the road ahead bumpy, yet avoiding that risk just leads to a road where there isn’t any scenery to look at. Think about it: the only reason you see greenery is because the earth went through billions of years of deadly heat, freezing cold, and thus provided the perfect medium to create the beautiful scenery of a road trip. When you made friends, there was a risk that those people could also harm you. But just as the earth required the chaos of formation to produce life, your life also requires that chaos of social risk to produce meaningful memories. Without the “bumpy road,” there is no destination worth reaching.
Ultimately, if there was no conflict, it would be a hollow victory because there would be an absence of joy. If you were to mute the volume of all suffering in life, you would inadvertently mute the volume of your triumphs and highs until you were simply left with a cold, uncomfortable silence. We choose to stay, we choose, to connect—not because we want the pain, but because the warmth of the people we love is worth every second of the cold that we experience. This is the Price of Admission for being human.
