Thought I'm Wrestling With: Does the Arrow Always have to Launch?
Rethinking Struggle, Sacrifice, and the Learner’s Mindset
"An arrow can only be shot by pulling it backward. So when life is dragging you back with difficulties, it means it’s going to launch you into something great. So just focus and keep aiming." — Anonymous
I often refer to this quote when people ask how I’m doing and I happen to be going through a rough patch. Most people don’t want to hear a Negative Nancy or a victimized take on life. We like positivity. Optimism. Strength through adversity.
So when life seems to be getting the better of me, I’ll say, “An arrow needs to be pulled back before it’s shot, right?”
But lately, I’ve become more curious about this frame of mind as I stumbled onto a thought theme that seems to be living rent-free in my head.
I’m not sure I’ll be able to fully articulate it in words, but it’s something like this:
I journey through life with the primary mindset of being a learner — constantly being a sponge of knowledge, information, experience, and feedback to course-correct the direction I’m going. You never know when something will be useful. When a past failure will reemerge and you’ll get a shot at redemption.
Humans weren’t designed for utopia. They were designed for this world — one that fights back at them, that plays no favorites. A world that’s a battleground of unrelenting adversity. One that no one has ever survived.
So it only makes sense to be on edge. Alert. Wary of the next obstacle that’s going to be thrown your way.
The great distinction between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom is our intellectual capacity for mental time travel. While a dog remembers where it buried a bone, only a human can imagine what might happen if it doesn’t find that bone tomorrow — or what others might think of its failure. This capacity for mental time travel is what allows us to regret, hope, plan, and worry.
Add in the brain’s default mode network — the system responsible for internal simulation and metacognitive reflection — and it becomes clear how deeply embedded the learner’s mindset is in our biology.
But where I find myself missing the mark is in believing there will be this ultimate moment where the lessons I’ve learned finally pay off. Where the culmination of hardships transforms me into the successful savant and the script flips. As if God has written the story of my life so that all the learning from the rising action reaches a climactic moment — and I’m able to live the remainder of my days in blissful resolution.
Let me break that down a little more.
I have this overwhelming tendency to analyze a current situation in a way that’s intended to bring about some benefit to me in the future.
“How can I navigate a social interaction next time to limit the negative emotions that accompanied it?”
“What can I learn from this setback at work so I’m successful the next time?”
“How can I package these latest life hardships into a lesson that I share with others to produce value for society at large? I would hate for history to repeat itself.”
I honestly have this belief that I must turn every point of adversity in my life into a form of compensation down the road — whether that’s financial, spiritual, emotional, or otherwise. I feel like I’m failing if I don’t incorporate every piece of current living into my mental algorithm of analysis in order to extract its full value.
If my arrow is being pulled back, I must glean an insight from it before I’m allowed to release it forward.
As if I’m living sub-optimally by neglecting certain experiences I’ve encountered along the way.
I was recently listening to a podcast with Andrew Huberman and author Michael Easter, where they explored resilience, grit, dopamine, and motivation. They examined the root of many modern-day struggles — and exposed the truth behind some of our so-called “first world problems.”
Most of you are probably familiar with the concept of delayed gratification, made famous by the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment in the 1970s. The core principle is this: short-term discomfort is necessary for long-term flourishing.
Pursuing a life of hedonism — where you choose the most pleasurable option at every moment — is bound to end in pain and regret. It’s one of life’s unavoidable trade-offs: you suffer now, or you suffer later. There’s no escaping it. The key is to suffer in a way that produces meaning.
Aristotle argued that true fulfillment comes not from chasing fleeting pleasures, but from living a life of virtue — which often means tolerating hardship in the service of something greater.
This theme runs through the Bible, too.
Luke 9:23 — Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily.”
Romans 5:3–4 — Paul writes, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character...”
Jordan Peterson puts it simply: “Don’t do what is expedient — do what is meaningful.”
Huberman and Easter point out that our modern lives are flooded with stimuli that deplete dopamine by tapping into our pleasure circuitry without offering any real reward in return.
Paradoxically, depriving yourself of pleasure — by taking a cold shower, exercising, or doing something difficult — is more challenging in the moment, but more rewarding after. Once the task is complete, your dopamine reserves are replenished — with interest — and pleasure is genuinely felt.
Huberman refers to this as investing dopamine versus spending or leaking it through instant gratification.
This got me thinking about how even noble self-denial can go too far — something I first encountered not in a psychology book, but in a finance one.
A few years ago, I read Die With Zero by Bill Perkins. In it, Perkins breaks down the fallacy we often fall into: believing we must always save for a rainy day. Save for retirement. Save for emergencies.
But in sticking to that framework too rigidly, we often die with unused wealth. Money that could have bought us experiences, memories, and enjoyment of our time while we were here.
Even if you say, “Well, I’ve left it for my children, and that’s what makes me happy,” the reality is: you’ll be dead when they receive it. You’ll never experience the joy of seeing them benefit from it. Perkins argues that delayed gratification — in the extreme — leads to no gratification.
“If we are unduly absorbed in improving our lives, we may forget altogether to live them.” — Alan Watts
Huberman and Easter both agreed that while investing dopamine is the superior approach, never spending it isn’t living either.
Chris Williamson makes a similar point: if you permanently “win” the marshmallow test, you never arrive at a moment where you actually cash in your effort for reward.
And so, back to my original mental quandary.
If I’m so fixated on reaping meaning from the present in order to utilize it in the future, does that paradoxically mean I’m living in the future at the expense of the present?
Do I need to release every arrow that gets drawn back? Do I need to attach meaning to all my struggles?
By this article’s logic, am I just paying into a knowledge bank account that I’ll never withdraw from?
Maybe just living is the compensation for the struggle.
Maybe Sisyphus was onto something when it comes to meaningless effort.
Or is life really just a biological test of survival of the fittest — and I need to be vigilant and sharp at a moment’s notice to pass it? Maybe each encounter with adversity should be met with war paint and a fight song.
Or maybe the point isn’t to optimize every arrow shot or suffer for the sake of strategy.
Maybe the mere act of being — of staying in the tension — is enough.
I’m not really sure. It’s something I’m still wrestling with.
But I’ll leave you with this quote from Naval Ravikant:
“Happiness is the state when nothing is missing. When nothing is missing, the mind shuts down and stops running into the past or future — to regret something or to plan something.”