David Epstein

And he found things, intuitive things like that suicide rates would increase when the economic fortunes of a country plummeted.

But he found they would also increase when the economic fortunes of a country skyrocketed.

Because anything that unmoored people from these kinds of obligations, what he called, he called enemy, which means rulelessness.

If people were sort of stripped of these normal structures and rules that they lived under,

they would struggle with finding meaning in life.

That's not to say that every constraint is good, but I think the idea that we just need more freedom, then we'll be happier, it actually usually looks like the opposite, that people with more constraints are happier, with married, with kids, with community obligations, with regular rituals.

And for some people, religion, going to a job is inconvenient.

Syncing up your schedule with someone else to spend time with them is inconvenient.

Kids are incredibly inconvenient.

all the time.

But these things also add meaning to our lives.

So I think it's tricky because it feels like more freedom should always be attractive.

In fact, I went to some years ago, this writer's retreat where we were all asked, the only one I've ever been to, where we're all asked, what are you optimizing for this year?

And I said, autonomy, because after my last book, I became just a writer for, you know, full-time.

I left like having a normal daily job.

And

I thought I just wanted to spend every minute in the way that I determined.

And fast forward two years and I learned there's such a thing as too much autonomy, where I was like living in an individualized world for one.

And so to reel that back, I joined the board of a nonprofit in my community.

I started going to like dance meetups with strangers and just started inconveniencing myself a lot more in order to add meaning back to my life.