CHAPTER 2 
 
Happiness Is a Problem 
 
About twenty-five hundred years ago, in the Himalayan foothills 
of present-day Nepal, there lived in a great palace a king who was 
going to have a son. For this son the king had a particularly 
grand idea: he would make the child’s life perfect. The child 
would never know a moment of suffering—every need, every de- 
sire, would be accounted for at all times. 
The king built high walls around the palace that prevented the 
prince from knowing the outside world. He spoiled the child, lav- 
ishing him with food and gifts, surrounding him with servants 
who catered to his every whim. And just as planned, the child 
grew up ignorant of the routine cruelties of human existence. 
All of the prince’s childhood went on like this. But despite the 
endless luxury and opulence, the prince became kind of a pissed- 
off young man. Soon, every experience felt empty and valueless. 

The problem was that no matter what his father gave him, it 
never seemed enough, never meant anything. 
So late one night, the prince snuck out of the palace to see 
what was beyond its walls. He had a servant drive him through 
the local village, and what he saw horrified him. 
For the first time in his life, the prince saw human suffering. 
He saw sick people, old people, homeless people, people in 
pain, even people dying. 
The prince returned to the palace and found himself in a sort 
of existential crisis. Not knowing how to process what he’d seen, 
he got all emo about everything and complained a lot. And, as is 
so typical of young men, the prince ended up blaming his father 
for the very things his father had tried to do for him. It was the 
riches, the prince thought, that had made him so miserable, that 
had made life seem so meaningless. He decided to run away. 
But the prince was more like his father than he knew. He had 
grand ideas too. He wouldn’t just run away; he would give up his 
royalty, his family, and all of his possessions and live in the 

streets, sleeping in dirt like an animal. There he would starve 
himself, torture himself, and beg for scraps of food from 
strangers for the rest of his life. 
The next night, the prince snuck out of the palace again, this 
time never to return. For years he lived as a bum, a discarded 
and forgotten remnant of society, the dog shit caked to the bot- 
tom of the social totem pole. And as planned, the prince suffered 
greatly. He suffered through disease, hunger, pain, loneliness, 
and decay. He confronted the brink of death itself, often limited 
to eating a single nut each day. 
A few years went by. Then a few more. And then . . . nothing 
happened. The prince began to notice that this life of suffering 
wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. It wasn’t bringing him the 
insight he had desired. It wasn’t revealing any deeper mystery of 
the world or its ultimate purpose. 
In fact, the prince came to know what the rest of us have al- 
ways kind of known: that suffering totally sucks. And it’s not 
necessarily that meaningful either. As with being rich, there is no 

value in suffering when it’s done without purpose. And soon the 
prince came to the conclusion that his grand idea, like his fa- 
ther’s, was in fact a fucking terrible idea and he should probably 
go do something else instead. 
Totally confused, the prince cleaned himself up and went and 
found a big tree near a river. He decided that he would sit under 
that tree and not get up until he came up with another grand 
idea. 
As the legend goes, the confused prince sat under that tree 
for forty-nine days. We won’t delve into the biological viability of 
sitting in the same spot for forty-nine days, but let’s just say that 
in that time the prince came to a number of profound realiza- 
tions. 
One of those realizations was this: that life itself is a form of 
suffering. The rich suffer because of their riches. The poor suffer 
because of their poverty. People without a family suffer because 
they have no family. People with a family suffer because of their 
family. People who pursue worldly pleasures suffer because of 

their worldly pleasures. People who abstain from worldly plea- 
sures suffer because of their abstention. 
This isn’t to say that all suffering is equal. Some suffering is 
certainly more painful than other suffering. But we all must suffer 
nonetheless. 
Years later, the prince would build his own philosophy and 
share it with the world, and this would be its first and central 
tenet: that pain and loss are inevitable and we should let go of 
trying to resist them. The prince would later become known as 
the Buddha. And in case you haven’t heard of him, he was kind 
of a big deal. 
There is a premise that underlies a lot of our assumptions 
and beliefs. The premise is that happiness is algorithmic, that it 
can be worked for and earned and achieved as if it were getting 
accepted to law school or building a really complicated Lego set. 
If I achieve X, then I can be happy. If I look like Y, then I can be 
happy. If I can be with a person like Z, then I can be happy. 
This premise, though, is the problem. Happiness is not a solv- 
able equation. Dissatisfaction and unease are inherent parts of 

human nature and, as we’ll see, necessary components to cre- 
ating consistent happiness. The Buddha argued this from a theo- 
logical and philosophical perspective. I will make the same argu- 
ment in this chapter, but I will make it from a biological perspec- 
tive, and with pandas. 

The Misadventures of Disappointment Panda 
If I could invent a superhero, I would invent one called Disap- 
pointment Panda. He’d wear a cheesy eye mask and a shirt (with 
a giant capital T on it) that was way too small for his big panda 
belly, and his superpower would be to tell people harsh truths 
about themselves that they needed to hear but didn’t want to ac- 
cept. 
He would go door-to-door like a Bible salesman and ring 
doorbells and say things like, “Sure, making a lot of money 
makes you feel good, but it won’t make your kids love you,” or 
“If you have to ask yourself if you trust your wife, then you prob- 
ably don’t,” or “What you consider ‘friendship’ is really just your 
constant attempts to impress people.” Then he’d tell the home- 
owner to have a nice day and saunter on down to the next house. 
It would be awesome. And sick. And sad. And uplifting. And 
necessary. After all, the greatest truths in life are usually the most 
unpleasant to hear. 
Disappointment Panda would be the hero that none of us 
would want but all of us would need. He’d be the proverbial 

vegetables to our mental diet of junk food. He’d make our lives 
better despite making us feel worse. He’d make us stronger by 
tearing us down, brighten our future by showing us the darkness. 
Listening to him would be like watching a movie where the hero 
dies in the end: you love it even more despite making you feel 
horrible, because it feels real. 
So while we’re here, allow me to put on my Disappointment 
Panda mask and drop another unpleasant truth on you: 
We suffer for the simple reason that suffering is biologically 
useful. It is nature’s preferred agent for inspiring change. We 
have evolved to always live with a certain degree of dissatis- 
faction and insecurity, because it’s the mildly dissatisfied and 
insecure creature that’s going to do the most work to innovate 
and survive. We are wired to become dissatisfied with whatever 
we have and satisfied by only what we do not have. This constant 
dissatisfaction has kept our species fighting and striving, build- 
ing and conquering. So no—our own pain and misery aren’t a 
bug of human evolution; they’re a feature. 
Pain, in all of its forms, is our body’s most effective means of 

spurring action. Take something as simple as stubbing your toe. 
If you’re like me, when you stub your toe you scream enough 
four-letter words to make Pope Francis cry. You also probably 
blame some poor inanimate object for your suffering. “Stupid 
table,” you say. Or maybe you even go so far as to question your 
entire interior design philosophy based on your throbbing foot: 
“What kind of idiot puts a table there anyway? Seriously?” 
But I digress. That horrible stubbed-toe-induced pain, the one 
you and I and the pope hate so much, exists for an important 
reason. Physical pain is a product of our nervous system, a feed- 
back mechanism to give us a sense of our own physical propor- 
tions—where we can and cannot move and what we can and can- 
not touch. When we exceed those limits, our nervous system 
duly punishes us to make sure that we pay attention and never 
do it again. 
And this pain, as much as we hate it, is useful. Pain is what 
teaches us what to pay attention to when we’re young or care- 
less. It helps show us what’s good for us versus what’s bad for 

us. It helps us understand and adhere to our own limitations. It 
teaches us to not fuck around near hot stoves or stick metal ob- 
jects into electrical sockets. Therefore, it’s not always beneficial 
to avoid pain and seek pleasure, since pain can, at times, be life- 
or-death important to our well-being. 
But pain is not merely physical. As anyone who has had to sit 
through the first Star Wars prequel can tell you, we humans are 
capable of experiencing acute psychological pain as well. In fact, 
research has found that our brains don’t register much differ- 
ence between physical pain and psychological pain. So when I 
tell you that my first girlfriend cheating on me and leaving me felt 
like having an ice pick slowly inserted into the center of my heart, 
that’s because, well, it hurt so much I might as well have had an 
ice pick slowly inserted into the center of my heart. 
Like physical pain, our psychological pain is an indication of 
something out of equilibrium, some limitation that has been ex- 
ceeded. And like our physical pain, our psychological pain is not 
necessarily always bad or even undesirable. In some cases, 

experiencing emotional or psychological pain can be healthy or 
necessary. Just like stubbing our toe teaches us to walk into 
fewer tables, the emotional pain of rejection or failure teaches us 
how to avoid making the same mistakes in the future. 
And this is what’s so dangerous about a society that coddles 
itself more and more from the inevitable discomforts of life: we 
lose the benefits of experiencing healthy doses of pain, a loss 
that disconnects us from the reality of the world around us. 
You may salivate at the thought of a problem-free life full of 
everlasting happiness and eternal compassion, but back here on 
earth the problems never cease. Seriously, problems don’t end. 
Disappointment Panda just dropped by. We had margaritas, and 
he told me all about it: problems never fucking go away, he 
said—they just improve. Warren Buffett’s got money problems; 
the drunk hobo down at Kwik-E Mart’s got money problems. Buf- 
fett’s just got better money problems than the hobo. All of life is 
like this. 
“Life is essentially an endless series of problems, Mark,” the 

panda told me. He sipped his drink and adjusted the little pink 
umbrella. “The solution to one problem is merely the creation of 
the next one.” 
A moment passed, and then I wondered where the fuck the 
talking panda came from. And while we’re at it, who made these 
margaritas? 
“Don’t hope for a life without problems,” the panda said. 
“There’s no such thing. Instead, hope for a life full of good prob- 
lems.” 
And with that, he set his glass down, adjusted his sombrero, 
and sauntered off into the sunset. 

Happiness Comes from Solving Problems 
Problems are a constant in life. When you solve your health 
problem by buying a gym membership, you create new prob- 
lems, like having to get up early to get to the gym on time, sweat- 
ing like a meth-head for thirty minutes on an elliptical, and then 
getting showered and changed for work so you don’t stink up the 
whole office. When you solve your problem of not spending 
enough time with your partner by designating Wednesday night 
“date night,” you generate new problems, such as figuring out 
what to do every Wednesday that you both won’t hate, making 
sure you have enough money for nice dinners, rediscovering the 
chemistry and spark you two feel you’ve lost, and unraveling the 
logistics of fucking in a small bathtub filled with too many bub- 
bles. 
Problems never stop; they merely get exchanged and/or up- 
graded. 
Happiness comes from solving problems. The keyword here 
is “solving.” If you’re avoiding your problems or feel like you 

don’t have any problems, then you’re going to make yourself 
miserable. If you feel like you have problems that you can’t solve, 
you will likewise make yourself miserable. The secret sauce is in 
the solving of the problems, not in not having problems in the 
first place. 
To be happy we need something to solve. Happiness is there- 
fore a form of action; it’s an activity, not something that is pas- 
sively bestowed upon you, not something that you magically dis- 
cover in a top-ten article on the Huffington Post or from any spe- 
cific guru or teacher. It doesn’t magically appear when you finally 
make enough money to add on that extra room to the house. You 
don’t find it waiting for you in a place, an idea, a job—or even a 
book, for that matter. 
Happiness is a constant work-in-progress, because solving 
problems is a constant work-in-progress—the solutions to to- 
day’s problems will lay the foundation for tomorrow’s problems, 
and so on. True happiness occurs only when you find the prob- 
lems you enjoy having and enjoy solving. 

Sometimes those problems are simple: eating good food, 
traveling to some new place, winning at the new video game you 
just bought. Other times those problems are abstract and com- 
plicated: fixing your relationship with your mother, finding a ca- 
reer you can feel good about, developing better friendships. 
Whatever your problems are, the concept is the same: solve 
problems; be happy. Unfortunately, for many people, life doesn’t 
feel that simple. That’s because they fuck things up in at least 
one of two ways: 
1.   Denial. Some people deny that their problems exist in the 
first place. And because they deny reality, they must con- 
stantly delude or distract themselves from reality. This may 
make them feel good in the short term, but it leads to a life of 
insecurity, neuroticism, and emotional repression. 
2.   Victim Mentality. Some choose to believe that there is noth- 
ing they can do to solve their problems, even when they in 
fact could. Victims seek to blame others for their problems or 
blame outside circumstances. This may make them feel better 

in the short term, but it leads to a life of anger, helplessness, 
and despair. 
People deny and blame others for their problems for the sim- 
ple reason that it’s easy and feels good, while solving problems 
is hard and often feels bad. Forms of blame and denial give us a 
quick high. They are a way to temporarily escape our problems, 
and that escape can provide us a quick rush that makes us feel 
better. 
Highs come in many forms. Whether it’s a substance like 
alcohol, the moral righteousness that comes from blaming oth- 
ers, or the thrill of some new risky adventure, highs are shallow 
and unproductive ways to go about one’s life. Much of the self- 
help world is predicated on peddling highs to people rather than 
solving legitimate problems. Many self-help gurus teach you new 
forms of denial and pump you up with exercises that feel good in 
the short term, while ignoring the underlying issue. Remember, 
nobody who is actually happy has to stand in front of a mirror 
and tell himself that he’s happy. 

Highs also generate addiction. The more you rely on them to 
feel better about your underlying problems, the more you will 
seek them out. In this sense, almost anything can become addic- 
tive, depending on the motivation behind using it. We all have 
our chosen methods to numb the pain of our problems, and in 
moderate doses there is nothing wrong with this. But the longer 
we avoid and the longer we numb, the more painful it will be 
when we finally do confront our issues. 

Emotions Are Overrated 
Emotions evolved for one specific purpose: to help us live and 
reproduce a little bit better. That’s it. They’re feedback mecha- 
nisms telling us that something is either likely right or likely 
wrong for us—nothing more, nothing less. 
Much as the pain of touching a hot stove teaches you not to 
touch it again, the sadness of being alone teaches you not to do 
the things that made you feel so alone again. Emotions are sim- 
ply biological signals designed to nudge you in the direction of 
beneficial change. 
Look, I don’t mean to make light of your midlife crisis or the 
fact that your drunk dad stole your bike when you were eight 
years old and you still haven’t gotten over it, but when it comes 
down to it, if you feel crappy it’s because your brain is telling you 
that there’s a problem that’s unaddressed or unresolved. In other 
words, negative emotions are a call to action. When you feel 
them, it’s because you’re supposed to do something. Positive 
emotions, on the other hand, are rewards for taking the proper 

action. When you feel them, life seems simple and there is noth- 
ing else to do but enjoy it. Then, like everything else, the positive 
emotions go away, because more problems inevitably emerge. 
Emotions are part of the equation of our lives, but not the en- 
tire equation. Just because something feels good doesn’t mean it 
is good. Just because something feels bad doesn’t mean it is bad. 
Emotions are merely signposts, suggestions that our neurobiology 
gives us, not commandments. Therefore, we shouldn’t always 
trust our own emotions. In fact, I believe we should make a habit 
of questioning them. 
Many people are taught to repress their emotions for various 
personal, social, or cultural reasons—particularly negative emo- 
tions. Sadly, to deny one’s negative emotions is to deny many of 
the feedback mechanisms that help a person solve problems. As 
a result, many of these repressed individuals struggle to deal 
with problems throughout their lives. And if they can’t solve 
problems, then they can’t be happy. Remember, pain serves a 
purpose. 

But then there are those people who overidentify with their 
emotions. Everything is justified for no other reason than they 
felt it. “Oh, I broke your windshield, but I was really mad; I 
couldn’t help it.” Or “I dropped out of school and moved to 
Alaska just because it felt right.” Decision-making based on emo- 
tional intuition, without the aid of reason to keep it in line, pretty 
much always sucks. You know who bases their entire lives on 
their emotions? Three-year-old kids. And dogs. You know what 
else three-year-olds and dogs do? Shit on the carpet. 
An obsession and overinvestment in emotion fails us for the 
simple reason that emotions never last. Whatever makes us 
happy today will no longer make us happy tomorrow, because 
our biology always needs something more. A fixation on happi- 
ness inevitably amounts to a never-ending pursuit of “something 
else”—a new house, a new relationship, another child, another 
pay raise. And despite all of our sweat and strain, we end up feel- 
ing eerily similar to how we started: inadequate. 
Psychologists sometimes refer to this concept as the 

“hedonic treadmill”: the idea that we’re always working hard to 
change our life situation, but we actually never feel very different. 
This is why our problems are recursive and unavoidable. The 
person you marry is the person you fight with. The house you 
buy is the house you repair. The dream job you take is the job 
you stress over. Everything comes with an inherent sacrifice— 
whatever makes us feel good will also inevitably make us feel 
bad. What we gain is also what we lose. What creates our posi- 
tive experiences will define our negative experiences. 
This is a difficult pill to swallow. We like the idea that there’s 
some form of ultimate happiness that can be attained. We like 
the idea that we can alleviate all of our suffering permanently. We 
like the idea that we can feel fulfilled and satisfied with our lives 
forever. 
But we cannot. 

Choose Your Struggle 
If I ask you, “What do you want out of life?” and you say some- 
thing like, “I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I 
like,” your response is so common and expected that it doesn’t 
really mean anything. 
Everybody enjoys what feels good. Everyone wants to live a 
carefree, happy, and easy life, to fall in love and have amazing 
sex and relationships, to look perfect and make money and be 
popular and well-respected and admired and a total baller to the 
point that people part like the Red Sea when they walk into the 
room. 
Everybody wants that. It’s easy to want that. 
A more interesting question, a question that most people 
never consider, is, “What pain do you want in your life? What are 
you willing to struggle for?” Because that seems to be a greater 
determinant of how our lives turn out. 
For example, most people want to get the corner office and 
make a boatload of money—but not many people want to suffer 

through sixty-hour workweeks, long commutes, obnoxious 
paperwork, and arbitrary corporate hierarchies to escape the con- 
fines of an infinite cubicle hell. 
Most people want to have great sex and an awesome rela- 
tionship, but not everyone is willing to go through the tough 
conversations, the awkward silences, the hurt feelings, and the 
emotional psychodrama to get there. And so they settle. They 
settle and wonder, “What if?” for years and years, until the ques- 
tion morphs from “What if?” into “What else?” And when the 
lawyers go home and the alimony check is in the mail, they say, 
“What for?” If not for their lowered standards and expectations 
twenty years prior, then what for? 
Because happiness requires struggle. It grows from prob- 
lems. Joy doesn’t just sprout out of the ground like daisies and 
rainbows. Real, serious, lifelong fulfillment and meaning have to 
be earned through the choosing and managing of our struggles. 
Whether you suffer from anxiety or loneliness or obsessive- 
compulsive disorder or a dickhead boss who ruins half of your 

waking hours every day, the solution lies in the acceptance and 
active engagement of that negative experience—not the avoid- 
ance of it, not the salvation from it. 
People want an amazing physique. But you don’t end up with 
one unless you legitimately appreciate the pain and physical 
stress that come with living inside a gym for hour upon hour, un- 
less you love calculating and calibrating the food you eat, plan- 
ning your life out in tiny plate–sized portions. 
People want to start their own business. But you don’t end up 
a successful entrepreneur unless you find a way to appreciate the 
risk, the uncertainty, the repeated failures, the insane hours de- 
voted to something that may earn absolutely nothing. 
People want a partner, a spouse. But you don’t end up attract- 
ing someone amazing without appreciating the emotional turbu- 
lence that comes with weathering rejections, building the sexual 
tension that never gets released, and staring blankly at a phone 
that never rings. It’s part of the game of love. You can’t win if you 
don’t play. 

What determines your success isn’t, “What do you want to 
enjoy?” The relevant question is, “What pain do you want to sus- 
tain?” The path to happiness is a path full of shitheaps and 
shame. 
You have to choose something. You can’t have a pain-free 
life. It can’t all be roses and unicorns all the time. Pleasure is the 
easy question. And pretty much all of us have a similar answer. 
The more interesting question is the pain. What is the pain 
that you want to sustain? That’s the hard question that matters, 
the question that will actually get you somewhere. It’s the ques- 
tion that can change a perspective, a life. It’s what makes me, 
me, and you, you. It’s what defines us and separates us and ulti- 
mately brings us together. 
For most of my adolescence and young adulthood, I fanta- 
sized about being a musician—a rock star, in particular. Any 
badass guitar song I heard, I would always close my eyes and 
envision myself up on stage, playing it to the screams of the 
crowd, people absolutely losing their minds to my sweet 

finger-noodling glory. This fantasy could keep me occupied for 
hours on end. For me, it was never a question of if I’d ever be up 
playing in front of screaming crowds, but when. I had it all 
planned out. I was simply biding my time before I could invest 
the proper amount of energy and effort into getting out there and 
making my mark. First I needed to finish school. Then I needed 
to make some extra money to buy gear. Then I needed to find 
enough free time to practice. Then I had to network and plan my 
first project. Then . . . and then nothing. 
Despite my fantasizing about this for over half my lifetime, 
the reality never came to fruition. And it took me a long time and 
a lot of struggle to finally figure out why: I didn’t actually want it. 
I was in love with the result—the image of me on stage, peo- 
ple cheering, me rocking out, pouring my heart into what I was 
playing—but I wasn’t in love with the process. And because of 
that, I failed at it. Repeatedly. Hell, I didn’t even try hard enough 
to fail at it. I hardly tried at all. The daily drudgery of practicing, 
the logistics of finding a group and rehearsing, the pain of find- 
ing gigs and actually getting people to show up and give a shit, 

the broken strings, the blown tube amp, hauling forty pounds of 
gear to and from rehearsals with no car. It’s a mountain of a 
dream and a mile-high climb to the top. And what it took me a 
long time to discover is that I didn’t like to climb much. I just 
liked to imagine the summit. 
The common cultural narratives would tell me that I some- 
how failed myself, that I’m a quitter or a loser, that I just didn’t 
“have it,” that I gave up on my dream and that maybe I let myself 
succumb to the pressures of society. 
But the truth is far less interesting than any of these expla- 
nations. The truth is, I thought I wanted something, but it turns 
out I didn’t. End of story. 
I wanted the reward and not the struggle. I wanted the result 
and not the process. I was in love with not the fight but only the 
victory. 
And life doesn’t work that way. 
Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for. 
People who enjoy the struggles of a gym are the ones who run 
triathlons and have chiseled abs and can bench-press a small 

house. People who enjoy long workweeks and the politics of the 
corporate ladder are the ones who fly to the top of it. People who 
enjoy the stresses and uncertainties of the starving artist lifestyle 
are ultimately the ones who live it and make it. 
This is not about willpower or grit. This is not another 
admonishment of “no pain, no gain.” This is the most simple 
and basic component of life: our struggles determine our suc- 
cesses. Our problems birth our happiness, along with slightly 
better, slightly upgraded problems. 
See: it’s a never-ending upward spiral. And if you think at any 
point you’re allowed to stop climbing, I’m afraid you’re missing 
the point. Because the joy is in the climb itself.