Introduction

I’m writing a multi-part series about finding happiness, in work and in life, and how that shapes the way I think about architecture and the built world.

Find the rest of the series here.

Part Eight

Life is Hard

Adventures are no longer possible for me. At least, not physical adventures. It’s difficult for people to grasp the limitation. No chasing my kids. No sports or activities. Even the idea of vacation is difficult – walking is pretty critical to doing anything that’s not sitting down, and when each step is painful, well, you want to limit that. I’m still trying to figure out a hobby that doesn’t require walking or running. I have yet to find it.

Maybe that will change. Maybe it won’t. But after three-and-a-half years, I’ve had to accept it as my reality and figure out how to move forward.

And after a lifetime of physical adventures and experiences, when you wake up one day crippled, through no fault of your own, with no money to show for it, and the inability to do nearly any of the things you used to do, well, you have to really contend with what the meaning of life is.

And you have to start to contend with the fact that suffering is the fundamental reality of life.  How do I know that?  

Try wishing it away.  And oh, I’ve tried. 

Life is fundamentally difficult. Uncomfortable. Unfair. Tragic.

It’s by no means just me.  My lawyer has far worse stories than mine – children made quadriplegics with the same $170k government liability cap which doesn’t even cover the bills. I have a friend whose young daughter was recently, out of nowhere, diagnosed with Stage 4 brain cancer. I met someone last month my age whose husband had died earlier this year. I know a young entrepreneur who’s going blind. A friend who recently found out their daughter was molested by someone in the family. An acquaintance who lost their child giving birth this summer. 

These are all people in my orbit.  Not random national news stories.

I could go on – and so could you.

There is simply no denying the fact that life is extraordinarily difficult, punctuated by intense tragedy. 

You can’t rely on happiness to get you through because there may be months, years, where you don’t experience happiness. Where pleasure and comfort are nowhere to be found. 

So what is one to do?

Pharmaceutical Grade Jesus

I grew up being taught that your heart has a hole in it. Like a donut. And Jesus is the donut hole – you say some words about “believing,” and bada bing, bada boom, he fills the hole in your heart. You’re fixed! Whole! Perfect! Happy! Like a magic pill.

That sounds….really nice. Who doesn’t like donuts? Or feeling whole – particularly without any effort or side effects? What a deal!

Except it’s complete nonsense. I know because I tried. When bad things happened, when I felt unhappy or unfulfilled, when I wasn’t who I wanted to be, I thought I just needed to believe harder. 

When that didn’t work, as a teen, I came to the conclusion: either 1) There was something fundamentally wrong with me – I was tainted and my faith wasn’t real – or 2) God wasn’t holding up His end of the bargain.

I settled for both: self-hate for not being the person I wanted to be and bitterness towards God for not delivering what was promised. The so-called magic pill that was marketed to me came with more side effects than solutions. 

Buying Happiness

Pharmaceutical grade religion isn’t the only magic-pill marketed to us in American culture. Every day, we are bombarded with messages promising that this or that product will fix us, make us whole, and bring us happiness.

The beauty industry tells us this or that jacket will transform us into the person we’ve always wanted to be. That hairstyle will make others see us the way we wish to be seen. Pharmaceutical ads promise a life of bliss — cue the music and slow-motion frolicking in the grass — with just one pill! A certain car will transport us into the adventurous lives we dream about. That vacation will inject meaning back into our lives. And a home renovation will finally fix our family dynamics, bringing us peace and making us feel settled.

The list goes on and on.

It’s Marketing 101: don’t sell the product — sell who people want to be.

This isn’t Capitalism’s fault; it works because we believe it. It’s embedded deep in American culture. The strategy works at every income level — constantly dangling something just out of reach, stirring desire while keeping the goal attainable. And when we reach it, there’s always a new “next thing” waiting on the horizon, ensuring that we never feel truly complete. It’s an infinite stepladder, and you never “arrive”.

We are wired to love progress, to feel the thrill of moving forward. Every new purchase brings a dopamine hit, a fleeting sense of fulfillment. But it’s cheap dopamine with diminishing returns — the more we do it, the less it works, and the feeling never lasts.  

Money simply cannot buy happiness. Religions have been telling us this forever, science has now proven it, and observation confirms it: if money could buy happiness, the wealthiest people would be the happiest. But they aren’t. And the ones who are happy will tell you it’s in spite of their wealth, not because of it.

In the end, the rich and the poor experience tragedy the same — money and things don’t soften the blow of a lost child or a catastrophic health diagnosis. 

Freedom From Constraints

I’ve been told that freedom from moral constraints, tradition, and authority is the key to happiness. That if we just shed the burdens of obligation and responsibilities – those rules, expectations, and duties – we’ll finally be free.  Happiness lies in doing whatever we want, whenever we want.  

Except I’ve never seen this work – not in the long run.  Not in my life, not in anyone else’s. When I’ve tried to live without structure or constraints, I didn’t find freedom – I found anxiety, shame and aimlessness. The same holds true for my children: they want to watch more screens, eat more sweets, and stay up later, but when I let them, they end up miserable. 

Without limits or accountability, people don’t thrive – they self-destruct.

Unbridled freedom isn’t bliss – it’s chaos and destruction.  I hold no envy for the person who lives without constraints or responsibilities. 

Virtue In Victimhood

I’ve been told that the greatest cause is to proclaim any injustice done against me, to hold it in my heart and wear it on my sleeve, to identify with it, and then force the world to cater to my whims. That I alone get to define who I am, and if everyone else would just treat me accordingly, how I want to be treated, how I demand to be treated, all would be well.  And my mission in life is to make it so.  

I am a cripple! The world has wronged me.  And now, the world owes me. 

The entire world should bend to my needs. The City should compensate me. My lawyer should treat me with dignity. No place should be inaccessible to me, no activity out of reach. How dare a building exist without an elevator! Or cobblestone streets that make it difficult with a bum foot! Any resistance to those demands? That’s ableism.

And there are a lot of “isms” out there now. It’s become a religion.

What a devastating ideology. Because it makes you weak. You cannot control others, so it makes you feel unsafe. It doesn’t bring confidence – it fills you with anger, bitterness and resentment. Because you simply cannot control the world.

You’ve been wronged? Great, join the club. You’ve been wronged more than anyone else? Fine, you win the award. Feel better? 

Exactly.

What Is Pleasure Without Pain?

Because life is fundamentally difficult, and at some level, we all know that, it makes sense to think the antidote to discomfort is comfort. Escape the pain, escape the suffering, and cocoon ourselves in comfort and pleasure, whether through religion, money, freedom or victimhood.

But perpetual comfort is an illusion. The more comfort we experience, the less we are able to experience it. 

Take temperature: 72 degrees is considered ideal for human comfort. But maximum human pleasure isn’t staying at 72 degrees. At 72 we simply don’t notice the temperature. It’s a lack of discomfort, not an active experience of feeling comfortable in a way that brings joy or gratitude. 

True pleasure is arriving at 72 from either extreme – the warmth after the cold, the cool breeze on a hot summer day.  It’s the contrast that unlocks the experience of pleasure and generates gratitude.  

And then it is quickly forgotten.

But it’s actually much worse than that. Not only does perpetual comfort have diminishing returns, it actively makes us less and less happy, over time. In fact, perpetual comfort makes us miserable.

Andrew Huberman’s episode on dopamine, which I listened to last year, fundamentally changed how I understood happiness. I cannot recommend it highly enough. But it can be summarized like this: perpetual comfort lowers our baseline dopamine, making us less and less motivated and happy. And pleasure, which spikes dopamine, also leads to a trough in dopamine, where we feel less motivated and less happy. 

But not all dopamine spikes are equal. Unearned pleasure – from drugs, cheap thrills, or mindless consumption – triggers larger spikes but deeper crashes. This drains our baseline dopamine, leaving us in a constant state of depletion.  Which reinforces our cheap, habitual shortcuts to try and not feel miserable. But it doesn’t work because we’ve reduced our capacity to experience pleasure. 

How do we break this cycle? The answer is counterintuitive: seek out hard things.  Earned pleasure – the satisfaction that follows effort and perseverance – brings sustainable dopamine spikes and raises your baseline. The hard-won victories of life increase not just your motivation, but your capacity for happiness.

Happiness can’t be picked up on the bargain table. It’s not a destination, nor something you stumble upon. It’s forged in the pursuit of meaningful goals, under challenging conditions.

There’s no shortcut, no way around it, for anyone, anywhere, no matter how rich or powerful or handsome or talented. It’s why the American Dream of retiring into bliss and lack of responsibility, sipping margaritas and playing golf all day, doesn’t work.

Well, damn. 

Peace Time Comforts

Religion, money, freedom, identity, status – I call these peace time comforts. 

They can work as a pursuit, for a time, when life is good and running smoothly. They provide a pleasant contrast to life’s inherent difficulty. They give us something to pursue. And we desperately need something to pursue.

But when true tragedy strikes? When your young daughter is diagnosed with cancer? When you lose your ability to walk? When everything falls apart? The shallowness of these pursuits reveal themselves, because there is no comfort to be found in those moments. Comfort and happiness have no depth, no staying power, and they cannot justify the suffering because they are not accessible in the suffering.  

And so, you need something deeper, more meaningful, more real, to sustain you. Or when the bad times come, and they will, you’ll be left hopeless and angry and bitter and resentful and broken.

War Time Stamina

I’ve come to believe the antidote to suffering isn’t comfort, or money, or platitudes, or wrapping yourself in an identity. 

The antidote to suffering is purpose.

But what is purpose, and how do you find it?  

I think the first step is listening.  Listening to what interests you, listening for what catches your attention and calls to your heart and comes to you in your dreams. 

What are the things you would be doing if you were not afraid? What do you know to be right? If there are two paths ahead of you, which of the paths requires the most courage? That is very likely the path you should take, for the greatest adventures all begin the same way: by stepping into the unknown. 

And step into the unknown you must. You must put courage to work. Because purpose does not come from thinking. Thinking can clarify direction, but purpose is revealed through pursuit. Through action. Purpose is what reveals itself along the adventure.

This requires trust in something. Trust that the harder path will be worthwhile, that there is something meaningful worth pursuing, that you were put on this earth for a reason, to do something that no one else can do, to offer something no one else can offer, and that what you seek, even if you can only see the tiniest spark, because it’s dark and you feel confused and lost and uncertain, by pursuing that spark that flashes in the dark, relentlessly, step by uncertain step, even when you lose sight of it, even when things get unimaginably hard, maintaining faith that it is there and it is real.  And while you do not know where it leads, you believe, you have faith, that the path will continually reveal itself, and will lead you to where you need to go, becoming who you need to be, and in the process, becoming whole.

This is what justifies the suffering.  This is why you abandon the safe and predictable for the unknown and uncomfortable.  And this is what sustains you when life’s inevitable tragedies strike. 

The Greatest Adventure

The greatest adventures lead to the greatest discoveries, and the greatest treasures, hidden and guarded by the greatest monsters – the dragon that guards the gold. And so the purpose of the adventure is to train you into the greatest hero, the fullness of your potential. To become everything you could be. That is the true journey of life.

Which, in turn, is the greatest gift you can offer – to your family, your community, the world, and God.

And you don’t need money, or status, or good looks, or even a working foot, to take on that adventure. You need courage. You need humility. And you need the willingness to step into the not-knowing, to take on the suffering voluntarily in pursuit of the highest good you can imagine.

THAT is what it means to believe in God. 

It’s not about words, rituals, institutions, or ‘beliefs.’ It’s about action – acting as if it is all real, that what we do here on this earth matters. That there is good and that it is worth pursuing. That there is abundance on the other side of suffering, if we engage with the suffering – perhaps not material abundance but soul abundance – and it is oh so much sweeter than gold.  

That our highest calling is to become all that we can be – a process that always includes death: death of our illusions, death of our weaknesses, death of our pride – so that we may be reborn, reshaped and refined, chiseled from the marble like David, and nothing short of glorious.

Suffering is an invitation to seek this purpose. To dig deeper. To excavate through the loamy soil and uncover something solid, something with real value. It is an invitation to search for the meaning that justifies your existence, and the suffering. And not just justifies it, but makes it worthwhile. 

Suffering, if you engage with it, helps you see the story behind the story, playing out in the background, which happens to be the real story. It connects you to the sublime, the mystical, the mysterious. It reveals the meaning within the mundane.

Suffering is an invitation to seek God. Because God is not a destination; God is the pursuit.  He’s not a belief, but the adventure of your life.

Pry Me Off Dead Center

In January, someone shared the following prayer with me. To say it was timely is an understatement. Suffering had brought me to the right place to open my eyes to the wonder of the world, connect the dots, and really see that none of it was meaningless, but quite the opposite: it was exactly what I needed to become who I wanted to be.

To be continued…

Conclusion

I’m finishing up this post and writing this very sentence on the morning of November 5, 2024. Yes, that happens to be election day. It also happens to be the day of my deposition with the City, 39 months after the accident. The indisputable facts are: 

1. They ran the red light (video evidence) 

2. They lied about it (video evidence) 

3. They covered it up (confession under oath) 

4. They cap their own liability to barely cover my legal and medical fees (Sovereign Immunity) 

5. They are deposing me, adversarially, to see if they can find any weaknesses in me that would play well in front of a jury.  

As my lawyer explained, the City’s lawyers are on salary – all of this costs them nothing, unlike private companies that pay by the hour, making trials extremely expensive – and so if they think there is even the smallest chance that they can make me look bad to a jury, completely irrelevant to the facts of the case, and shave $10k off my settlement, they will do it. So he has warned me against showing any anger, indignation, or entitlement – because juries hate that.

Thankfully, while it has taken me all of 39 months, I am exactly where I need to be, and who I need to be, for this very moment. And for some very strange and bizarre and inexplicable reason: I feel grateful, more whole, and more happy than I have ever been.

Austin