The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Suffering and emptiness sit at opposite ends of the same problem. Relief from one tends to move you toward the other, which is why a life arranged entirely for comfort so often goes flat, and why people escape flatness with things that hurt them. The swing between the two is the ordinary texture of most weeks rather than a personal failure.

If you are in pain, the aim is to reduce it, and nothing here asks you to find meaning in it. If you are bored, the answer is usually effort rather than entertainment, since boredom yields to difficulty more readily than to distraction. Knowing which one you are in saves you from the wrong remedy.