Grit vs. Good Fortune: College, Careers, and Who We Become

In this episode of the SSU Philosophy Club series, Sonoma State philosophy students join hosts Anthony Wright and Adam Dietz to talk honestly about work, school, and the stories we tell ourselves about “making it.” Colette, Andrew, and Peter share real experiences from jobs and internships, some great, some pretty rough, and explore how those moments shape character, confidence, and direction.

Along the way, we keep circling one live question:

How much of who we become is really up to us, and how much is given by luck, opportunity, or privilege?

We don’t land on a simple answer, but we do try to name what feels true from the inside of college life right now.

In this episode:

• Why certain jobs and internships feel “character building” (and when that’s just code for bad conditions)
• How grit, persistence, and showing up actually play out in real student lives
• The role of luck and opportunity: who gets access to which doors, and when
• How our stories about being “self-made” affect the way we see ourselves and others
• What philosophy can offer when you’re trying to choose a path that’s not just about money or status
• The tension between gratitude for what you’ve been given and the desire to claim your own effort and growth

This conversation is part of an ongoing collaboration with the SSU Philosophy Club, exploring what philosophy looks like when it’s lived, not just studied.

Foreign.

I'm Anthony Wright and I am your host today with my co host, Adam Dietz.

Welcome.

And Adam is.

We are co hosts on the show that's called the Living Conversation and we'd like to welcome you.

And we have guests today from the Sonoma State University Philosophy Club.

And welcome Colette and Andrew and Peter.

So Colette, you were saying before we got started that you had a topic you wanted to talk about.

And what exactly did you want to talk about today, please?

Yeah.

So the last philosophy club meeting we were discussing whether suffering was essential to living a good life or not, which is kind of an interesting conversation.

So what do you think, Adam?

Me?

I think that, you know, we come from a very strong background of Chinese philosophy.

And in Chinese philosophy, suffering is when something is out of harmony.

So the principle of life is should, should be in harmony.

And there's a natural state is harmony.

So when something, when, when someone gets sick or when someone's suffering, it's something that's out of harmony.

So to think that suffering.

The short answer would be in Chinese philosophy, is suffering necessary for a good life?

They say no, actually suffering is the opposite of a good life.

Suffering comes when something's out of harmony.

So people should emphasize trying to let their original harmony come out, their natural self come out and revert to this kind of natural harmony.

So this will have no suffering.

Actually, it's very, very, very wonderful, very good, very happy.

You know, one of the things also that I had.

Thought about with, with suffering and certainly.

Would you refresh my memory, Adam, about Was it Socrates who said the to live a good life, hey, you have to have an examined life?

Yes, that's correct.

Okay.

Because one of the things that it was a real breakthrough for me to understand.

And this was a Buddhist idea about.

It, was what the Buddha saw when he looked over the.

The edge of the palace he was living in and he saw old age and saw people.

Dying.

But what Alan Watts was talking about was that suffering comes from desire.

And.

That.

You get into sort of a interesting paradox about.

Desiring not to desire.

And.

The problem comes actually from the illusion of separateness because the desire is to separate yourself from something.

And that was a real breakthrough for me because then I came to understand that if there's no separated individuality, then there's no suffering.

Because this is, this body that's calls itself Anthony, is just what the universe is doing here and.

For each of us is of course is a resonant node in the holographic field.

If you want to get technical about it.

But it was very useful for me to understand.

That there wasn't any separated me.

So it's just what the.

What the cosmos is doing.

What did you guys get into Colette?

And.

And what did you come to any conclusions?

So it was pretty 50, 50 by the end of the hour.

But so.

So I was on the side of like that we have to have suffering in order to have a good life.

And Haley, who's not here this time, but she was talking about how.

Like if you're suffering, then.

Then when you come out of the suffering, then you appreciate the good moments even more because, well, at least it's not that bad, you know.

And I think, Andrew, were you on the other side?

I think.

Right.

Yeah, I'm on the other side basically completely is.

Is that.

I don't think suffering is necessary for a good life.

And we were coming at it from many different angles.

They were talking about both enjoyment and they were also talking about.

It wasn't the angle I was trying to talk about, but I believe you were talking about like the like ethics, like in terms of.

You have to have suffering to be a good person.

Was that.

Was that what you were saying or somebody was saying that I believe might not have been you.

But do you remember that?

I do remember us talking about that.

Yeah.

That's a toughie because like if you haven't experienced real suffering, then like it's.

It's really difficult to.

To feel for those people who are suffering and to be able to understand where they're coming from and really experience true empathy.

So do it that what you will.

So you're saying that suffering is a part of the human condition.

Yeah.

Okay.

And I guess go ahead.

I also thought somewhere along the same lines that sometimes it might be necessary to even see yourself become a better person.

I really thought about this and I really do think that working deliberately toward personal goals in life can feel like suffering in the moment.

Though I think to build meaning in life, there is an element of suffering that is needed for yourself to find.

It and say suffering is.

I believe that you're working toward goals in life.

Yes.

And I really do think that if you really work towards it, it can.

Be derived from something that you invested a lot in to see yourself grow.

There's one example that I have had where I've tried many work experiences.

For instance, I wanted to go for after school and some of it my search for purposeful work experience that is meaningful for me spanned from first I wanted to shadow in a real Estate office to practice, an internship, then another experience for building websites within another place.

And it seemed to me that in those experiences, to really get a meaningful reward toward finding something, there's an element of grit for that meaning to really blossom from it.

And you really get more of a meaningful reward by building your goals out and making your personal meetings and career go greater than it was before.

And those are some of the meanings of grit and self growth that have really started to develop greater from my various experiences.

That's so interesting.

That makes me think of like what you were saying, professor, right, is like when you were talking about desire.

And like it's.

You can equate it to yearning.

It's like if you don't have something to yearn for, then like you're almost missing out on the human condition.

You're.

You're almost not living your life to the fullest if you don't have something to yearn for.

What say?

I think.

Yeah, so interesting.

Also, in Chinese philosophy, you should have a great goal, great will.

So often in Chinese history, they would ask the students, okay, beginning of school, maybe like even kindergarten, what's your great goal?

And the students will all.

So many students will answer, I want to be a Confucius.

Very high goal, very high goal.

So yes, I agree that you should have a really high goal.

And that's part of, that's part of growth experience as a human being.

I agree 100%.

As far as the suffering goes though, there's things that are out of your control, right?

There's those things you have to learn how to maybe go with the flow, right?

And take care of yourself, protect yourself.

Because.

Because true happiness, true freedom is all inside you, right?

Your mind, your heart, your soul.

That is where happiness always exists.

You can't have happiness without that.

You, your happiness is within.

So the better you are in touch with your mind and your heart and your soul, the more you can endure anything.

Even in a difficult situation, even if it's something out of your control that is stressful, you can't.

It's giving you trouble, it's giving you suffering inside your mind.

If your mind is very cultivated, you can still be happy.

As the Buddha said, there is suffering in the Four Noble Truths.

There is an end to suffering, and the end of suffering is the Eightfold Path.

And it's.

I don't remember all eight of them, but.

It'S right action.

Right attitude.

And I guess in complexity science terms, it would be.

A coherence or a resonance with what?

Whatever happens to be going on in the moment.

And yet I do appreciate, Colette, what you're saying about.

In order to have empathy for someone else who is having difficulty, it's.

Really important to have had some difficulty yourself.

Is that, is that what you're saying?

Yeah.

Okay.

What do you think, Andrew?

Well, so where I disagree is.

A.

Lot of that conversation is framed around what our lives currently are and not, I think, what they could be.

And so.

As hopefully, as, as most of human history has shown, people are generally trying to build a better future for the next generation.

And so at some point.

As long as we don't go extinct and as long as we that keeps holding, there will be, and I have no reason to believe we will go extinct anytime soon.

Then I.

There, there will come a point where the, the amount of bad things will, will reach an equilibrium.

There will be like, yet the.

Yes, there will be sometimes bad parents that don't get caught.

And there will be some natural disasters that.

We just don't see coming.

But.

We will reach a point where we have minimized suffering and there will be a large majority of the planet that does not have suffering.

I mean, in the sense that we have today.

I mean you just look at compared today to 300 years ago, right?

Just, just for modern medicine, for example.

And so.

But the reason we developed the modern medicine is because we didn't like the way that we were dying.

We didn't like the way we were.

We were living either.

And so the living is the experience of the suffering is going through stuff with scarlet fever and cholera, etc.

And.

So clearly there is suffering that we want to engineer out of society.

And.

Why should we stop it at any point?

Why, why do we have.

I remember one of the things we were talking about when we were on the grass talking about this is.

One of the things that came up was like ice cream flavors, you know, like, well, I'll always, you know, I don't, I don't have to like, in order to have that perfect life.

I don't have to have ice cream every day or whatever, but I'll always choose flavors I like.

And people are saying like, well, what if you always have your favorite flavor?

You know, you'll never know what bad ice cream is.

Like.

It was like, I don't need to have had bad ice cream to still like the ice cream that I like.

You know, why, why do I have to taste, you know, like shoe flavored ice cream once in my life, you know, in order to know that I like chocolate?

I don't have to.

I'm thinking about all the jelly beans that Harry Potter was getting.

Exactly.

You know, we have to take a short break.

I want to end this particular section with a.

With a poem about anti fragility.

So it goes like this.

Since my house burnt down, I now have a much better view of the rising moon.

So we have to take a short break and we'll be right back.

So stay tuned.

I'm Anthony Wright and I am your co host today with Adam Deeds.

And Adam and I are co hosting a show that we are calling the Living Conversation.

And today our guests are members of the Sonoma State University Philosophy Club.

And welcome Colette, who is the president, and Andrew and Peter.

And before the break, we were talking.

About.

I ended the last segment with this idea of antifragility.

And do you know what I mean by that, you guys?

A sense of that.

You could explain it.

Okay.

It's more about that when adversity strikes that actually the.

Working through the adversity only makes you stronger.

So the example I gave was the poem about since my house burnt down, I now have a better view of the rising moon.

And it's to reframe that adversity.

Is that what your experience is, Colette?

And understand that's actually exactly where I was going to go next with this conversation.

Yeah.

Because I like.

Okay, I really like the phrase pressure makes diamonds.

And I think it's true.

Yeah.

Like, what was the example I was thinking of?

Because it's not all about, like, what your favorite ice cream flavor is or whatever, you know, okay, we always like to, to pick sides and, you know, it's all just good fun.

Never any devils advocating too much.

But.

Like, you know, it, it's, it's never, it's never as simple as an ice cream flavor.

It's usually a lot more than that.

And so I think we need to redefine suffering as a term that we're using maybe because, like.

Suffering in the context of ice cream is, is not too bad.

You know, like, oh, dang, you get a bad flavor.

Like, know your day is not completely ruined.

And it can be the same thing.

You can apply that same mentality to other, like, places of suffering.

Like how Peter was talking about different job opportunities or.

Different, different school opportunities too.

You know, you have to have that element of suffering in order to perform better in school and to advance further so that you have the opportunity to learn more things.

You know, there's, there's levels to, to getting there.

And so, you know, you could look at it as suffering in that.

Like, you know, oh, dang, I've got to do all this homework.

I got to read all these books.

There's so much to do.

And that's, in a way, in a way that's suffering.

But so, like, like, even though it is suffering.

You could redefine it in your mind and, and just, like, the poem that you're talking about, professor, like, if you, if you reframe it, like, like, yeah, it's, it's a little bit of suffering, but I know I'm gonna get something good out of it eventually.

Then it's like, good suffering, if that makes sense.

Good suffering.

My goodness.

Do you think does if.

If someone like Elon Musk doesn't make as much money as he wants to, does he suffer.

From his perspective?

Yeah.

But.

Okay, so, so there's many things that I want that I don't get, you know?

Like, and are you, do you suffer?

It depends on the thing.

Like, there are things that I want that are, like, just unrealistically out of reach.

So there's no emotional attachment to, like, not being able to get it.

Okay, so it's like, does that make sense?

Suffering has an emotional attachment to it.

Well, yeah, I think by definition, because suffering is.

It'S an experience of something that I don't want.

I don't want to have this emotion.

So I, I, I, I think that's just definitionally true or close to how I would define suffering is, is a feeling I do not want to experience.

Okay.

So it's not always, Always an.

Does that always have an emotional component to it?

I would say it fundamentally has to.

Okay.

Because I, I don't see how I could experience suffering and not have an emotional attachment to it.

It, It.

Because I wonder if people have an emotional attachment to not having enough to eat.

For example, do you feel bad emotionally.

Poorly.

If you're hungry.

Yeah.

Or if you're injured or some other adverse condition, you're smiling at them.

What do you, what do you have?

Like, I like that Linder said.

Yeah.

He's like, yeah, I agree.

I agree, Andrew.

Yeah, you don't feel good about it.

But I want to.

Touch on something Colette was saying, and Andrew was kind of building off of this idea of good suffering.

When I was a teenager, I was immature, and I was very attached to girls.

So everything was heartsick puppy love all the time and was really suffering, suffering.

So I made an effort to.

I finally got, I got sick of being sick.

Lao has a, has a line in the Dao De Ching, when you're sick of being sick, then you can.

Then you can advance.

So I was sick of being lovesick.

I was sick of having this suffering.

So I actually went out and one of the first places I drove to on my own, without any.

Impetus, just on my own, was to go to the city library.

Back before I'm so old, we didn't have Internet really, back then.

So I went to the city library and looked up books on Buddhism and thought, I'm sick of being sick.

I want to try and get out of this.

This pattern, right?

And, you know, that that was okay.

It didn't really go anywhere, but over the years, it was a seed that kept building and building and building and building.

So if I look at that example from when I was a teenager and I really did feel like I was suffering.

And then I fast forward to a few years ago when I had a death in the family, very close family member.

And this.

Yes, I was mourning.

Yes, I was crying.

Yes, I was, you know, dealing with my other family members.

But there was a joy in doing it right.

You know, you're feeling this sadness, and you should be feeling it, and you can embrace it and fully feel it.

And there was a joy in that.

So I think that that's an example of having.

Some suffering.

But you have the perspective and you can really lean into it.

And yes, it did make me much more.

I want to say I developed from that you were talking about before, that you need suffering to develop.

Well, I did because it was such a strong emotion.

I did experience it.

I did feel like I developed and grew as a person.

But there was joy through the whole process.

Deep inside I could see, yes, I'm crying.

I'm choosing to cry.

I'm choosing to mourn.

I feel more connected to the person that I'm mourning.

I feel like it's appropriate.

And then over, of course, over time, those feelings lessen.

But when I feel like when you're doing things that are appropriate and harmonious with your circumstances, there's joy deep within that.

I think that just describes the whole, like, you need to let your emotions go free in order to, like, live them fully and.

And move forward.

Like, if you're feeling really terrible about something, you shouldn't box them up or bottle them up.

You should really dig deep into it.

And then in that process, you become.

More.

More whole.

I want to say, like, more human.

Yeah.

By doing that really makes sense.

I do think that there might be some biopsychological reasons we might have even evolved to feel these momentary states.

And I really do think that if we experience them in the moment, then we're able to figure out ways we can improve our current circumstances.

So then we can improve.

Alleviate those temporary states and.

Improve it so that we can move on from it.

So they could be sort of like signifiers that we evolved with to help us develop from our temporary states.

Interesting.

I have a new idea, if that's okay.

My new idea is.

I think my generation is getting really good at digging into some emotions and not others, I think.

And for example, I'm thinking about the horror film genre.

I think that my generation is being, is, is training itself to be very good at responding to frightening things, but not very good at responding to sad things.

So they're, they're letting themselves be scared over and over every time they go see a new horror film.

And then they are almost.

Dimming their, their insides because of it.

And so then they, they don't react as strongly the next time they see something scary.

They're.

I can't think of the word right now, but.

And then like in contrast the.

They're like really bad at dealing with their sadness.

So that, that's my new thought.

With a woman and after a very short time she left.

And I was in grief for a long time.

And part of the thing that I had learned about grief was the fastest way out of it was straight through it.

And that was, that was very useful.

And actually the end of it was this idea that I got from Alan Watts again.

Was.

And again to.

To speak about it in a Zen Buddhist way.

It's a mosquito biting an iron bull.

And the mosquito has to bite and the iron bull can't be bitten.

And the, that's the illusion of separateness, that I am me and you are you, and I want you and.

But for some reason you don't want me.

And.

But wait, what's, what's the sum total of all this in a larger context?

And it is just, oh, this is what the cosmos is doing here.

So there isn't any separated Anthony or the person that I cared for.

It was just that the cosmos was doing that.

And, and that made it much more on.

Comprehendable to me in that I could just let go and say, oh, okay, that's what the cosmos is doing.

So the other thing that the cosmos is doing is that we have to take a short break.

I'm Anthony Wright.

And I am your co host today with Adam de.

Adam Dees.

And we are on the show that's called the Living Conversation with the Sonoma State University Philosophy Club.

And how can people contact you guys?

Yeah, so we're just on Instagram @SSU Philosophy Club.

Check us out.

Reach out anytime.

And I'll be the one answering.

Great.

All right, we'll be.

We'll take a short break and be right back, so stay tuned.