I stumbled across "I am rich and have no idea what to do with my life" on the orange website today. I found it both frustrating and funny, because I feel that this represents a common error in thinking modern western culture. That is: the idea that happiness can be found in achieving some identity.
In the article, I paraphrase that the author has aspirational goals like:
I want to be rich enough that I never have to work again.
I want to climb the tallest mountains.
I want to change the world.
These aspirational status-seeking goals are a trap; A cursed form of hedonism that takes lots of effort for only a little pleasure in return. Unfortunately, whilst achieving ones goals does indeed feel good, the feeling is unsustainable. The source of these desires is the desire to be a certain kind of person, that has achieved some high-status identity with the mistaken belief that achieving this identity will make them happy.
The idea that happiness and contentedness can be found in success and status, is in my observation, somewhat untrue. Before we can understand why this is the case, we need to first understand a few things about identity. For example, what an identity is actually for.
What is a personal identity?
Before we can get to the rarely spoken of reflection on the utility of an identity, it makes sense to first define what it is.
Personal identity is a name, or descriptor that we have for ourselves. It takes the form, "I am ____", where blank could be "a programmer", "Gregokavich", "a human", or any words that we might use to describe ourselves. A personal identity also consists of things like, "I like pie", and "I dislike smelly feet". It doesn't matter how long or complex or nuanced it is, so long as we believe it to be true.
Most of the world goes through life with the belief that a person and their identity are one and the same thing. That as we grow older and more mature, we learn more and more about ourselves and develop a more and more nuanced understanding of our identities.
I was certainly surprised in my adulthood to discover that this is not the case. Only sometimes do we discover our identity by observing our own behaviours, instead our behaviour is dictated by our identity.
For example, a person that identifies as ethical, when presented with an opportunity to steal without getting caught, will make the decision not to steal. A person that identifies as a member of a sports team, will make sure that they get to all of their games. A person identifying as a man will hopefully prefer to go to the men's toilet rather than the women's.
So then:
What is identity for?
The primary purpose of an identity is to help you and others make decisions about you more quickly and easily. It is a form of optimisation. This optimisation applies in multiple ways:
The identity you present to others helps them decide how to treat you.
Your personal identity guides your choices of how to behave.
We need this, because otherwise when we face a decision, like, "what should I have for breakfast?", we would be paralyzed with indecision unless we have already have a sense of personal identity in regards to this. (I enjoy avocado on toast.)
This feeling of indecision and uncomfortable moratorium is a universal human feeling where we are facing choices for things that we do not have a strong sense of personal identity. "Now that I'm rich, what should I do with my life?", or, "What should I study at university?". For some of us, this decision is easy and for many others of us it is completely paralyzing.
So therefore, a well-formed identity is useful to avoid suffering. It makes decisions lower-effort and less painful. But it is in my opinion important to keep in mind that reduced suffering and happiness are not the same thing.
Having a complex achieved identity will not cause you to be happy, unless somehow that achieved identity is, "I am happy".
So here we stumble across some more nuance: We have both achieved, and aspirational identities. We have the identity that is the sock-puppet we hold up in-front of ourselves for other people to see, which is distinct from the identity we want to have, which can also be distinct from how we actually behave. This sock-puppet is sometimes called the "ego" or "egoic identity".
The important thing about this complexity, is whilst an identity can help relieve suffering, it can also cause it.
For example, a person that identifies as a Christian will desire to follow the rules taught to them by their church (aspirational identity), will want their community to see them as a Christian (egoic identity), but then they might have have anti-Christian prejudices that they keep to themselves that are in conflict with both of these.
This person will suffer from cognitive dissonance whilst they try to resolve the the conflict between their prejudices in their identity ("I don't like ___ people") and their Christian ideals ("love your neighbour").
Another example, is that an identity can cause us to make choices that directly lead to our own suffering. A person experimenting with a rebellious identity may try drugs, or crime. A person may throw themselves onto a grenade because they identify as good and believe that saving others is the right thing to do.
From these examples, we see that an identity is a trade-off. We ideally want an identity that is broad or nuanced enough so that we can make decisions easily, but also consistent and free of conflict so-as to avoid cognitive dissonance. Further complicating this, we also need an identity that ingratiates us to our community and gives us a sense of connection and belonging.
But, as I have already said, whilst achieving some desired identity can give us a little pleasure, it is unsustainable. We can think to ourselves, "Yes! I solved the problem like the good programmer that I am!", but feeding our ego's like this doesn't work unless we can keep adding more and more wins to feed it more and more. It is a very risky strategy of well-being because eventually we will come across a problem that we cannot solve, and then crash into an identity crises. "I failed to solve the problem. Am I really a good programmer after all?"
On not being miserable
So how do I think this ties into not being miserable? Happiness does not actually come from achieving status, climbing a mountain, being rich or accruing whatever other power we think might be useful to have in some idealistic version of ourselves. Setting goals and achieving them feels good because it feeds our ego's but it is not sufficient.
Actual happiness comes from being able to sit in a quiet room by yourself without punishing yourself. Simply choosing to be in the moment and enjoy the sensation of being alive, and then seeing that anything on top of that is just a nice bonus.
When I was much younger, I was inspired by the Paul Graham essay Keep Your Identity Small. Having a more nuanced understanding of what identity is, I think this still applies. We should see identity for what it really is: a tool. Our identity is not us, it simply a model for making decisions.
In the same way that the pursuit of truth does not lead to happiness, because truth is simply having models that make more effective predictions, the pursuit of identity is also a trap. Instead, just choose an identity that you feel will serve you and the people that you love and want to be in a community with.
I choose to think of myself as a programmer because I have invested enough time into programming to be ok at it, it gives me a community of interesting people, it allows me to make a nice living for myself and my family, and solving problems feels good.
If I was in the position where I didn't have professional skills or relationships that nurtured me already, I would study an occupation (any problem-solving one would do. Maybe I would be an electrician?) that would eventually lead to these things. Looking around for people that seem happy and then doing what they do seems like a good starting point.