Grit and Grief: Knowing When to Push Through and When to Let Go
Two essays published today in the New York Times explore what initially seems like a contradiction: the value of persistence in the face of difficulty and the equally important practice of knowing when to let something go. On one hand, David Brooks reminds us that difficulty isn’t a sign something is wrong—it’s often a signal that we’re doing something meaningful. He writes, “We use cost-benefit analysis when we are operating in a prosaic frame of mind. But I don’t think anything great was ever accomplished in a prosaic frame of mind. People commit to great projects, they endure hard challenges, because they are entranced, enchanted. Some notion or activity has grabbed them, set its hooks inside them, aroused some possibility, fired the imagination.”
In Cody Delistraty’s essay, the lens shifts to our growing reliance on AI and the temptation to use it as a shortcut through discomfort. He warns that in an efficiency-obsessed culture, we risk bypassing the experiences that shape us. “The more we use these tools for avoidance,” he writes, “the greater their potential for harm—disconnecting us from our own pain and from the communal mourning to which our society should be striving.” In this view, technology is not inherently harmful, but it becomes so when we use it to escape the friction that growth and healing require.
Together, these essays point to a deeper truth at the heart of the Great Life Project: meaningful lives aren’t built by avoiding difficulty or grinding through it blindly. They are built by choosing what matters—and staying with it. They’re shaped in the tension between enchantment and discernment, effort and release. The work, then, is not to eliminate struggle but to understand which struggles (and which people) are worth our full presence. That’s where the path toward a great life begins.
Ophelia Garmon Brown/Novant Health
By the way, if I ever felt the need to use a chatbot to continue a conversation with someone who is no longer with us, it would be with Dr. Ophelia Garmon-Brown. I always imagine her sitting on my shoulder, whispering wise counsel to keep me grounded, but I miss her physical presence every. single. day.