Is It That Deep?

I was going to make a post about how recently I've been playing chess on Duolingo and how it has changed the way I think, and now I am an enlightened, overthinking philosophical genius-but also, it's just chess.

Sometimes I think we have the tendency to romanticize and turn everything into a life lesson-something quotable, something to take away.

Not everything needs to be justified. You can just do things. I know this sounds vague, but you don't need a reason to write or do stretches. There isn't a grand reason to do a bunch of things, yet we feel like we need to find a reason to do them; if not, we don't do them.

I can think of multiple things I do for the sake of doing them, even if there isn't some big positive outcome. For example, I play chess because I want to. It might increase my cognitive skills or make me better at decision-making-I'm just playing chess.

Some people just like going to the gym because it's fun. Not for the physique, not for the validation-they just like going to the gym.

Not everything needs some sort of reason if that makes sense. You can go on random walks, take a nap, or read some manga.

The funny thing is, maybe that makes it easier to become better at something. When there is no pressure and you are doing it purely for entertainment, maybe you get better at it. There are people who become amazing at video games because they treat it like a hobby, not a profession. Same with technically inclined people: they do it not thinking about the salary, but actually enjoying the process.

I wonder if we can take this mentality and apply it to goals where we actually do care about the end goal and the rewards that come with it.

Let's say it's becoming a musician, and you have this vision of performing at TD. You feel pressure to make good music. You want labels. You want fans. It's hard to just "enjoy" it when you have such a big goal with a very low success rate of making that dream a reality. If you were to just enjoy making music for the sake of it, would you become a better artist?

It's hard to forget the end goal, though, because it's why you're doing it in the first place. You can't just remove it, because then you wouldn't be doing it in the first place. That being said, it doesn't mean you aren't enjoying making music either-you probably do, and that's why you want a career in the first place.

With that being said, I want to start trying to just enjoy coding, and to just enjoy going to the gym instead of always thinking about that fantasized end product. Because it might not be that deep.