Everyone would like that—it’s easy to like that.

If I ask you, “What do you want out of life?” and you say something like, “I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like,” it’s so ubiquitous it doesn’t even mean anything.

A more interesting question—a question that perhaps you’ve never considered before—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.

What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?

Everybody wants to have an amazing job and financial independence—but not everyone wants to suffer through 60-hour work weeks, long commutes, and obnoxious paperwork, to navigate arbitrary corporate hierarchies and the blasé confines of an infinite cubicle hell. People want to be rich without the risk, without the sacrifice, without the delayed gratification necessary to accumulate wealth.1

Everybody wants to have great sex and an awesome relationship—but not everyone is willing to go through the tough conversations, the awkward silences, the hurt feelings, and the emotional psychodrama to get there.

They view pain as an objectively negative thing to be avoided at all costs, whereas reality is much more nuanced. As I cover extensively in my Resilience Course in the Mark Manson Premium Subscription, we are all capable of—and I’d argue responsible for—ascribing meaning to our pain, and this can actually give our life purpose.

But most people don’t realize this. And so they settle. They settle and wonder “What if?” for years and years until the question morphs from “What if?” into “Was that it?” And when the lawyers go home and the alimony check is in the mail they say, “What was that for?” If not for their lowered standards and expectations 20 years prior, then what for?

Happiness requires struggle. The positive is the side effect of handling the negative. You can only avoid negative experiences for so long before they come roaring back to life.2

At the core of all human behavior, our needs are more or less similar. Positive experience is easy to handle. It’s negative experience that we all, by definition, struggle with. Therefore, what we get out of life is not determined by the good feelings we desire, but by what bad feelings we’re willing and able to sustain to get us to those good feelings.

This Collection aims to attract original research that develops or employs methods to break down and recycle plastic materials by mechanical, chemical, or biological means.

In order to be most effective, sustainable architecture should take into consideration broader urban contexts, site planning, and transportation, taking input from the community at each stage. These practices create more livable and resilient spaces. Adoption of green building is growing worldwide due to increased environmental awareness and its long-term benefits.

This Collection seeks to showcase the latest trends around this topic by inviting submission of original research investigating new approaches for green building and sustainable architecture.