Do you find life too hard? Do you ever wonder why life is a struggle? Passivity may seem like it has a place in the world because of the rest we daily engage in and the relative ease our parents may give us in our childhood. It may seem like this is the way life should be. However, struggling is a part of life and, indeed, is its main drive. Life exists to live, and living isn’t guaranteed at any time. We don’t live in a passive world. The universe is in a constant state of change, and this change has to be met with effort and change on the part of a living organism. Life is self-sustained, self-generated action. It must keep moving forward or it will perish. Indeed, this all can even be tied into the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which establishes the property of entropy (or the increasing “disorder” of the universe). In the end, the universe is an ever changing environment that the living organism must struggle with and adapt to in order to survive.
“To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.” -Jerry Seinfeld
Life is a struggle for living organisms. Everything in the universe is in a process of change, including living organisms. Things that are dead decay and eventually go away. This change from a whole body to constituent parts isn’t isolated to the dead. One can think of the world as something that constantly impinges upon a person. Our bodies are in a constant state of working and protecting themselves. Passivity is death. Activity secures the things we need to sustain ourselves. Although it’s not true that struggling more is always better; struggling is necessary for our daily existence. Life is complex, and it takes effort to make it simple enough to be manageable for people. There are limited resources, and they all take effort to secure. To not be struggling is to be inert, which is reserved for non-living matter. Indeed, a life without struggle is nothingness. If you had nothing to struggle for, you would not act; you would simply do nothing, with the days passing by like a pointless movie. The struggle of life is the meaning of your existence, and the presence of a struggle isn’t an absence of joy.
Entropy suggests struggling is necessary in order to maintain your life. That you must bring order and energy to tasks in order to live. According to the physical sciences, entropy is the tendency of the universe towards disorder, as defined by man. Things are always changing towards a state that is unlike the current one. The universe (according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is the physical law about entropy) is heading to a state where there would be no matter or energy (which means no planets or galaxies). This tendency to disorder affects living organisms as well (humans will dissipate as the planets and galaxies do in time). However, in living systems, entropy can decrease through an intake of energy (this would be food or sun light), so you maintain order, your body and its integration, through your striving to live. Life creates order through its activity. Your life can be seen as a sustained effort against entropy. Your death occurs when the entropy in your life reaches its maximum point (with entropy increasing as you get older).
“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.” -Seneca
Although struggling in life can be painful sometimes, it is a necessary and meaningful part of life. Life is nothing without struggle. Passivity will merely bring you death. Like Seneca says, it is striving and trying ever more that brings us greater ease. To try to create ease out of passivity paradoxically dooms you to a world of suffering. Entropy is a constant in our universe, and only our continued efforts, struggles, and striving keep it at bay during our lives. You have to struggle for your life and your future.