Most people don’t seem to find the indulgence of pure pleasure meaningful in the long term. Directly seeking pleasure may be satisfying in the short run, but the common wisdom is that a meaningful life can only be found by struggling against and overcoming adversity. It seems rather counter-intuitive, but I think there is a fairly simple evolutionary explanation.

Struggling, in the most fundamental and abstract sense, is evidence of attempts at something that is outside the realm of capabilities of the individual. Operating near the boundary of what is possible is dangerous and tiresome, because if you pushed too far outside the boundary, it usually meant death. Successfully overcoming the adversity is the best case result of this struggle. It means to operate as close as possible to the boundary while still staying within what is doable. Being able to accomplish this is most likely extremely rewarding for reproductive fitness and genetic propagation. For example, it might mean being able to find a better quality mate than usual, or being able to support a larger family successfully.

Over the evolutionary time scale, the people who did not push for that boundary, who did not struggle to try the difficult, were outcompeted in reproductive success by those who did. And today, as the descendants of those who overcame adversity, we have become physiologically conditioned to “enjoy” the struggle. This conditioning takes the form of the feeling of “meaningfulness” in our minds, whenever we attempt to push towards the boundary of impossibility.