When someone pursues a goal with a high enough risk for failure, and especially one with high energy costs, their body gives them a little biochemical boost in the form of adrenaline, endorphins, and anandamide. All the best research on exercise consistently demonstrates that physical exertion is followed by improved affect, sense of wellbeing, anxiety reduction, post-exercise calm, etc. When you consider the sort of lifestyle that man has lived in the first few hundred thousand years of his infancy – all the famines and the predators – you start to look at this knowledge with the impression that the human body was not just forged in a state of constant conflict, but is at its best and most fulfilled in such a state.
Very recently in his development, in only the last 10,000 years, man started living in cities. In just the blink of an eye, he was removed from the horrors of nature, no longer having to fight and kill his rivals over barely enough food to survive. The city provided him with enough food, comfort, and security to satisfy his every need. Conversely, as the world around him became more consistently safe and orderly, he grew more agitated, more anxious, and less satisfied.
Finally, one day 2000 years ago one man was so fed up that he up and left society to live in the wilderness for 40 days. He starved himself to the point that on the 40th day he hallucinated the patron saint of Rock n’ Roll, who came to him and offered him food, security, and power in exchange for his allegiance. For whatever reason, his little cynical publicity stunt led him down a path of self-discovery and he refused the offer. He believed he had everything he already needed while living in the wilderness.
It’s difficult to understand what his insight was all about unless you try it yourself, so men all around the world emulate his retreat into the wilderness each year by going the entire month of November without rubbing one out.
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