Doing Things You Don't Want to Do...to Get to the Good Stuff

Yesterday my fifteen year old daughter and I were having this exact conversation.  There are lots of things she wants to do, but then lots of things she has to do to get to the things she wants to do.  And those, she's not so thrilled about doing.

I reassured her that we all feel the same way.  There are lots of things we all have to do to get to do the things we want to do. My husband stuck me with dozens and dozens of needles so I could get pregnant with her, for example. And during my pregnancy with my older daughter, I threw up every day for just about nine months, but then I got to have her.  I've experienced hundreds of rejection letters from literary agents and publishers, but in the end, I found a way to get my book published.  My husband had to work at a lot of bad/underpaid/sucky boss jobs before he got to work at the job he has now, where he is well respected, loves what he does, and has the autonomy he has always sought.

But still, all this didn't necessarily sit well with her. Doing math to get into college? Hardly seems worth it, at times.  Doing homework four hours a night? But why?  As a teenager, it feels like there's a whole, whole lot of bad stuff to get to the good stuff.  At least, I felt like that when I was a teenager. Most of the time, I wasn't even quite sure there would be any good stuff.  It was just like this: bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.....partially not so bad, a little less bad, bad, bad, bad, bad....

So how do we, as humans, slog through the bad stuff to get to the good stuff? Are we just programmed to do this?  And why do some people do this more easily than others?  Like, why are there people who give up on life and except a meager rationing of good stuff so they can avoid the bad stuff altogether? And why do some people deal with so much bad stuff that it hardly seems any good stuff ever happens for them?  And what happens when you have a whole lot of bad stuff in a row, and it feels like there never will be any good stuff? I'm just not so sure how it works.  All I know is that we have no choice but to deal with the bad stuff.  And then, hopefully, we'll get to the good stuff.