The most important question of your life

I absolutely loved that! Perfect! Just perfect! Thanks for sharing it.

I've been realizing over the past few years that life is all about picking your poison. I felt like the article added a bit of a positive spin to the idea of picking your poison. I really liked that. It helped me see it all in a different way.

Damn. I needed that.

This is not the first thing I have read by this Mark Manson bloke, and it won't be the last.
He makes great common sense with his views.

He is a great proponent of the life law of *choice* = *consequence* which happens to dovetail neatly with what I think too.

This part especially is relevant to people in a sm..
"If you find yourself wanting something month after month, year after year, yet nothing happens and you never come any closer to it, then maybe what you actually want is a fantasy, an idealization, an image and a false promise. Maybe what you want isn’t what you want, you just enjoy wanting. Maybe you don’t actually want it at all.

Sometimes I ask people, “How do you choose to suffer?” These people tilt their heads and look at me like I have twelve noses. But I ask because that tells me far more about you than your desires and fantasies. Because you have to choose something. You can’t have a pain-free life. It can’t all be roses and unicorns. And ultimately that’s the hard question that matters. Pleasure is an easy question. And pretty much all of us have similar answers. The more interesting question is the pain. What is the pain that you want to sustain?"

"If you find yourself wanting something month after month, year after year, yet nothing happens and you never come any closer to it, then maybe what you actually want is a fantasy, an idealization, an image and a false promise. Maybe what you want isn’t what you want, you just enjoy wanting. Maybe you don’t actually want it at all."

In some of our cases, it's not a matter of wanting a fantasy or an idealization.  The obvious flipside of his argument is what do you want more.  Month after month, year after year I have wanted a closer more intimate relationship with my spouse.  I wanted that and worked for it.  But...it's a myth that everything you work for comes true and it's a truth that sometimes other things simply win in the battle for finite time.  How much will you work for something also means how much will you give up to get it?

I admire those with the courage to move on for a relationship and support you in your decision.  I just wasn't willing to give up what was required but it doesn't mean it hurts any less.

I'm not sure if it's courage or desperation.  For many years I tried with everything I had to make it work under the mistaken assumption that I was the problem.  When I finally realized that things were not going to improve and the only way out was death, things clarified for me.

I don't want to give up what is going to be required either, but I just couldn't live this way anymore.  It was not courage.  It was the quiet desperation in knowing I was halfway through my life and waiting for the clock run out.  That really changes the equation on what you are "giving up".