The consumer perception of difficulty
In the United States alone, it is estimated that conspiracy-style podcasts generate around $500 million annually. The self-help industry pulls in roughly $12 billion. The
news industry exceeds $200 billion, with at least 70% of its tone skewing negative. Mental health care, including therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, medication, inpatient treatment, and outpatient treatment, accounts for well over $140 billion in spending.
Meanwhile, the average American spends about 80+ hours per week consuming media, more than half of waking life. In contrast, only about 5
hours per week are spent in prayer, silence, reading, or contemplative thought on average by an American adult.
When you stack those numbers together, something becomes hard to ignore: we are constantly consuming, constantly being informed, constantly being told that something is wrong, broken, urgent, or unfinished in our lives.
And almost everywhere you turn, you hear the same refrain: life is hard.
But I increasingly wonder whether “life is hard” is less an objective conclusion and more a conditioned perception, one shaped by what we consume, how we interpret reality, and whether or not we believe there is meaning underneath it all.
Not to deny suffering. Not to pretend that illness, loss, financial strain, anxiety, or doubt are not real. They are. They press in on everyone in different ways. But there is a difference between acknowledging difficulty and constructing an entire worldview in which difficulty becomes the defining lens of existence.
Because if life is framed primarily as hardship, then life becomes
something to manage, optimize, escape, or constantly fix. And that is precisely where entire industries thrive.
It is much harder to monetize the belief that life is fundamentally good than it is to monetize the belief that life is broken.
If life is good, then fewer things feel urgently necessary. Fewer
purchases feel like salvation. Fewer voices feel like authority. But if life is hard, if something is always missing, then there is always something to sell you: a program, a diagnosis, a product, a podcast, a supplement, a new system, or a new narrative.
This is not conspiracy thinking; it is basic incentive structure. Fear and dissatisfaction are powerful economic engines. Think of the lobbying and
politicking that takes place because each party is always saying that the other is making your life miserable and that they have the solution.
And so, we end up surrounded by industries that, intentionally or not, reinforce a baseline sense of insufficiency: news cycles that emphasize crisis, podcasts that thrive on outrage or anxiety, self-help systems that imply perpetual incompleteness, and even
wellness industries that turn healing into a constant project.
Layered on top of this is a staggering amount of media consumption, hours upon hours each week of voices, opinions, stories, and commentary shaping the inner weather of the mind. If nearly half of waking life is spent consuming external input, it is worth asking how much of our inner life is truly our own.
Against that backdrop, it is not surprising that many people feel overwhelmed. But it may be worth asking whether the overwhelm comes only from life itself or from the way life is continuously interpreted, narrated, and amplified.
In contrast, traditional spiritual life, what used to be called the interior life, requires silence, attention, and restraint. But those
are precisely the things least rewarded in a high-consumption attention economy. The average person spends only a few hours per week in quiet reflection, prayer, or reading. And let’s be honest, the numbers backing the few hours per week average are a bit wishy-washy. If you take out the devoutly religious, then the average is probably closer to an hour or two, often coming from driving when Spotify will not work or being stuck somewhere with a dead phone battery.
The imbalance is striking: a flood of input versus a trickle of interior stillness.
Saint Thomas Aquinas is often paraphrased, sometimes loosely, as suggesting simple remedies for the body and mind: rest, nourishment, and peace. Modern sensibilities may find that reductionistic, but there is a deeper point worth considering: not every human problem is solved by
adding more complexity. Some are healed by simplicity, rhythm, and order. Aquinas famously said that the cure for depression is a big glass of wine, a hot bath, and a good night’s sleep.
At the heart of all of this is a more fundamental question: what do we believe life actually is?
If life is only a
fragile span of time governed by chance, scarcity, and eventual loss, then of course anxiety makes sense. This worldview also explains why transhumanists want to live forever. “Forever” means infinite time to finally “get it right,” whatever “right” even means. This anxiety-fueled worldview causes every moment to become fragile. Every gain becomes temporary. Every loss becomes absolute. In that framework, the pressure to constantly improve, optimize, and secure happiness becomes
unbearable.
But if life is something different, if it is meaningful beyond accumulation, if it is oriented toward love and eternity, and if it is held within a larger reality grounded in God, then the weight of existence changes. Not because suffering disappears, but because suffering is no longer ultimate.
Within that Christian framework, life is not primarily a problem to solve but a space in which love is chosen. Love in consolation, love in desolation, love in clarity, and love in confusion. Not as sentiment, but as willing the good of another even when the emotional conditions do not support it.
That changes everything.
Because then the metric of a life well-lived is not comfort or constant stability, but fidelity to love in whatever conditions appear.
Without that grounding, it makes sense that life feels like a constant uphill battle. Everything must be maintained. Everything must be secured. Everything can be lost. And so attention, money, and energy are
continually poured into systems designed to manage fear. Those who have read my essays for a long time will remember the connection between fear management and my arch-nemesis: the secondary market.
But with that grounding, even difficulty becomes an opportunity, an opportunity to love.
There is an old
kind of joke sometimes told in spiritual circles: a sinful and unrepentant man arrives in heaven and is told that the activity there is worship and communion with God. He replies that it sounds horrible and boring. In response, the saints tell him, “Well, this is heaven for us, but it sounds like it will be hell for you.”
The point is not about afterlife mechanics. The point is perception. The same
reality can feel radically different depending on what the heart is ordered toward.
And that is where the deeper tension lies in modern life. We are not just consuming information, we are being formed by it. If we are formed primarily by narratives of scarcity, crisis, and dissatisfaction, then life will naturally feel like scarcity, crisis, and dissatisfaction.
But if there is even a small anchoring in the belief that life is fundamentally held in love, then the same external world does not disappear, but it changes character. Suffering is still suffering, but it is no longer the final word and thus does not come across as an unbearable load.
In that sense, the real question is not whether
life is hard.
The real question is what we believe life is for, and whether we are willing to let that belief reshape what we see, what we consume, and what we ultimately choose.
So do not be a despairing consumer who helps nefarious agents and industries grow. Rather, be a contemplative chooser of Love
whom people need and industries will loathe.
