He said that people in America have it so good that they now have to invent problems in order to feel like they have a struggle to overcome.

He’s not wrong. While every life has its troubles, Americans are far better off than the majority of the world. In fact, it’s so good that people have become lazy both physically and mentally. Moreover, they become addicted to that laziness to the point where they do something incredibly fascinating. They will avoid true hardship while adopting “hardship.” This means many of these people will adopt fake problems in order to feel like they’re going through a struggle and will avoid things that cause a person to grow or actually be fulfilled through real hardship.

Six years ago, I was living in an apartment in a trendy part of Dallas. I was in my early 30s, single, and despite borderline hating my job, my days were free and easy. The biggest concern I had was what I was going to do to fill up my free time. I would exercise on Katy Trail, cook brand-new recipes, play video games, and binge-watch shows. I’d go traveling back and forth from Dallas to Galveston and hang out with friends. It was an incredibly easy life but if there’s one thing that I couldn’t deny, it’s that life was depressing and unfulfilling. It was incredibly selfish and I lacked real hardship.

Fast forward to today and I now have a wife and a 7-month-old child. He’s currently sick and not sleeping well which means I’m sick and not sleeping well. I have bills and debts to pay, mouths to feed, and the time I get to myself has been reduced to next to nothing. These are just the beginning of the things I’m dealing with today and the stress of it all is giving me gray hair.

I’ve also never been happier in my adult life. The fulfillment I feel in going through this hardship is far better than the emptiness of a life that lacked any real issues. The problems I had six years ago seem laughable now. I now get to worry about things that matter, and I want to put emphasis on the words “get to.” I would take my fussy baby boy over another lonely day as a bachelor.

The reason I feel fulfilled is simple; I’m now doing something that truly grows me as a person by doing something that focuses on something other than myself. I don’t want to give off the impression that people have to live my life to feel fulfilled. My path is just one of many that can lead to fulfillment, but many people in America today actively avoid doing something that will grow them because it would disrupt the ease they currently live in. I’ve had many conversations with people in my generation and younger, especially lately, where they tell me they could never do what I do because it sounds too hard.

It is hard, but anything worth doing often is.

So what happens when you avoid doing something that could disrupt your life for the better? Some people find distractions as I once did and they can take many forms, but some people turn to something worse; fantasy.

I don’t mean video games or obsessions that live in Geekdom. Hobbies are great to have. I’m talking about advocacy for social issues that aren’t actually real. They adopt pronouns of various kinds in an attempt to feel like they’re on the wave of a movement that is changing the world. As they do, they feel the need to join the fight to normalize this kind of thing and soon they self-qualify as “oppressed” and see themselves as freedom fighters.

The best part? They don’t actually have to do anything except complain online and maybe attend a few rallies. Their labor is to be reactionary to slights both real and imagined. They can sit on their couch (or their parent’s couch) and spend all day playing social warrior on their phone or laptop and walk away feeling as if they did something. They’ll go to bed when they want, wake up when they want, eat what they want, and never have their day interrupted by something that truly matters.

But they’re tilting at windmills they themselves created. They’re running fast but never truly moving anywhere. In fact, you could say that by giving themselves problems that don’t exist, they’re actually moving backward. They stagnate as people and have so deluded themselves into believing they’re there because of others that they descend deeper and deeper into unhappiness and hatred of a world and its people who truly had no skin in their game in the first place.

The old man was right. They didn’t have any problems and had it so easy that they needed to find a way to matter to the world, but most importantly, convince themselves that they had a purpose. They didn’t want to engage in anything that would actually require real work so they imagined themselves into depression and hardship.

I can confidently say that the vast majority of people who concern themselves with pronouns are people who don’t actually have any problems but themselves. They are their own issue. They are people who refuse to do what’s necessary to grow as a person and will choose depression, stagnation, and anger over happiness through hard work and a focus on someone other than themselves.

In a way, they’re pitiable. They’re lost creatures who’ve been fooled by modernity into unhappiness.