On Striving

UPDATED ON FEB 3, 2025

What is it that drives us? What is it that we are driven towards? Why must we always be driven towards/by this or that?

Why is it important to ask these questions?

If one wants to understand themselves and their act of living, then perhaps one of the first places to begin would be to understand one’s pursuits in life and the forces or the motivations that shape/guide these pursuits.

Seeking the sustenance of the physical organism is probably the most fundamental force that drives our actions. Anything that threatens our physical existence must be avoided/overcome.

But once that question is resolved i.e., one’s physical survival is not under any immediate threat, what after that?

A certain striving underpins all our efforts in life. This striving could be towards material or non-material objective, but there definitely is the impulse to attain something that is missing or not enough at the moment, to fix something that is not as it should be, to become something that one is not, all according the personal image of how it should be.

What are some of our most common pursuits?

Wealth — Material wealth in the form of money is essential to ‘survive’ in the modern world. But once one has ‘enough’ to ensure one’s immediate physical survival, whats the point of accumulating wealth after that? Clearly, it is to ensure psychological security. A way to ensure one’s mental continuity, i.e. one’s sense of self, into the unknown future.

Fame — The idea of fame essentially involves a perceived expansion of oneself through the expansion of one’s name, beyond one’s physical self. It also represents the continuity of oneself beyond one’s physical death.

Power — The ability to have power over others, or over one’s environment is the ability to direct their actions and behaviours according one’s ideas and desires. It represents a victory of self over the other and hence a continuity and strengthening of this sense of self.

Knowledge — The knowledge about the physical world and its workings is needed for all the scientific and material progress. But the mass of psychological knowledge that one builds up about oneself and others, about human mind and behaviour, all the psychological, philosophical, religious etc. ideas and concepts that tell us how to live and act, provide a sense of psychological security by strengthening the idea the act of living can be grasped intellectually. This continuous nourishing of the known is also the nourishing of one’s sense of self. The greater the mass of such knowledge that one possesses the more may feel attached to the idea of accumulating even more knowledge, while this world of concepts leads one farther and farther away from the actual world as it is.

Companionship — We seek companionship in form of romantic partners, or friends. The idea of an ideal life partner usually equates with the idea of having someone with whom we can share our sadness and joys, fears and pleasures etc. What we look for in such a partner is someone who can complete us/fix us, in other words, who can fulfill our deepest longings. Over time such a partner becomes a mere vehicle for the fulfillment of desires of one’s sense of self, and hence its continuity. In other words, the self seeks the other for the sole reason of ensuring its own continuity.

Grand Ideas and Groups — Grand ideas, like nationalism, religions etc. last much longer than an individual. Identifying oneself with them is a way to ensure the continuity of oneself into the future. Ditto with larger groups. One identifies with one’s tribe or one’s community, or groups of various kinds, pretends to lose oneself in them because they give one a sense of psychological security, validate one’s sense of self and strengthen it.

To make the world a better place –Based on the ideas of liberty, equality, justice, etc. one may be moved to dedicate one’s life to helping others. Not to say that one shouldn’t do it, but it is important understand what it involves. Helping others can be laudable in many ways and much needed for those in urgent need. But what happens when it becomes one’s identity? When one begins to derive pleasure merely from the act of doing things for the other? Although such actions are generally labelled ‘selfless’, they often inflate the sense of one’s self so much so that after a while the reason for continuing to do this quietly shifts to the enhancement of the self image.
This is a complex issue for other reasons too. E.g. help for one can easily become a cause of damage to many others. Perhaps we should inquire more into this.

‘Spiritual’ Pursuits—Losing oneself in divine, or somehow attaining the divine in order to be free of all suffering. On the surface it seems that this idea of losing oneself in something so grand is different from other pursuits like wealth fame or power. While all these pursuits involve a strengthening of self. the whole purpose of losing oneself in the divine is losig one’s ego. But is it really? What is divine, if not an idea? It is essentially an attempt to completely escape all the suffering through immersion in one idea, an idea whose grandness is its USP. All that one does to attain the divine, whether it is reading scriptures or performing religious rites and ceremonies is an investment in this idea that soon becomes one’s identity. In other words, rather than losing oneself in the divine, one identifies oneself with the idea of the divine and strengthens one’s sense of self.

Pleasures — Pleasure is what we hope to obtain from all the the pursuits above, in one way or the other. E.g., while we wish to have psychological security through wealth or fame, we won’t be able to keep up with these pursuits if we couldn’t derive pleasure out of them. The pursuit of goals and ideas is a constant pleasure in its own right. All pleasures, whether they intoxicate us, give us a high of any kind, the untold luxuries and exotic places and foods we wish to enjoy, or even simpler daily pleasures like watching movies, reading, chit chatting with friends etc. are all ways to escape our actuality and hence our sufferings for some time. The strongest, most thrilling pleasures, like sex and drugs, are usually those which make us forget ourselves entirely. But immediately after the high, the self and the reality come rushing back, perhaps with greater force. And so one goes back to seek more pleasures, maybe with greater highs. It turns into a vicious cycle. One’s attachment to pleasure, one’s desire to escape oneself, fuels and nourishes the sense of self that demands more and more of it.

We can think of more examples of human striving but most of them would fall under one or more of the above. It is clear from these examples that while some pursuits, like wealth, fame and power etc. have a clear and direct connection to the strengthening and continuity of one’s self (the known), the others, seemingly more benign pursuits like knowledge, grand ideas, groups or spiritual pursuits may seem to be more self-effacing on the surface, they end up having the same effect.

One can say that all our pursuits in life are centered around strengthening and continuing our sense of self. We can also see the paradox that rules our lives. One one hand, our greatest pleasures are those that let us escape our mind, i.e. ourselves for a few moments, on the other hand all our activities in life, including the pleasure seeking ones, only end up tethering us even more to ourselves.

What are the implications of such striving?

Our striving to ensure our psychological continuity involves a constant battle with the unknown, a battle that one is doomed to lose (for what is death if not the ultimate victory of the unknown?). This battle with the unknown is all of our suffering. We come to believe, thanks to our oversimplified, over-explained, dumbed down, linear, black and white, cause and effect concepts, that somehow with our striving we can bring about real happiness and security for ourselves. The more one accepts and throws oneself into striving as way of living, the more one is considered to be well-adjusted or adapted to the world, while the suffering continues to grow.

We remain unable/unwilling to see that striving itself, no matter for what, is our greatest pleasure, and simultaneously the cause of all our suffering too. A paradox!

So what does one do then? Does it mean one should stop acting altogether? Is it even possible?

Life demands constant action. One must act in the various fields of living all the time. But can one become aware of one’s striving, not just intellectually as we have done on this page, but in one’s life, as the striving unfolds moment by moment? The striving we see in the physical world is merely the visible side of the mental striving, that never stops, perhaps not even when we are asleep. We experience this in the constant chatter inside our heads, constant planning and scheming, constant dance of the memories etc. Can we be aware of all this and begin to watch all this as it happens? Can we see clearly our fragmented, paradoxical actions that keep us going all the time? What happens then?

Is it possible to live without striving? What would it mean to not strive? What kind of action would it be that would not emerge from striving towards this or that?