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I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.
Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.
The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.
| just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.
Some things I think we want to aim at for our entire lives, and those things are good in and of themselves even if we don’t achieve them.
I think getting good nutrition, staying in a healthy state/sustaining or increasing our health span so we aren’t sick, exercising so we can still get out of bed every day, seeking novelty and variety in the things we do, exploring new places, learning about the world around us and ourselves, sharing all of these things meaningfully with others on a similar journey, and even defending things that mean a lot to us are some examples of this.
The idea that these experiences must last eternally was something Nietzsche talked about this in his works. He rejected Plato’s notion of the Forms as well as many religions’ concepts of a life after death - this “other world”. To Nietzsche, the good life in this world is defined by how far life can stray from its best moments, and that working through hardships and recognizing that they aren’t permanent gives us the power of freedom.
Good times must be accompanied by bad or even mediocre times. Good times lasting forever are no different than bad or mediocre times lasting forever. So yeah, writing that book or making that friendship/relationship can be a good thing. And if those things aren’t perfect, we have more reason than enough to make them better. Whether that’s work shopping the book until it gets better or starting over with fresh new ideas. Whether that’s meeting new people and developing those friendships over time, or leaving them for new friendships when other people don’t want to reciprocate. I like to think of so many people wishing for good times to last forever are lazy and just don’t want to put in the effort to change, which in my view is the whole point.