Molière, the French poet and playwright, is believed to have said that the greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it. This sounds reasonable (even motivational), but it puts all the emphasis on the obstacle and none on what the obstacle is in the way of.
Should you glory in overcoming an enormous obstacle whether or not you get what you were going after when you encountered it? And what if what you were going after isn’t worth the effort you invested in overcoming the obstacle?
As meaning-makers, we invest obstacles with a considerable amount of purpose, importance, and significance. So there’s no shortage of evangelizing about the benefits of struggling to overcome them, as if they have some intrinsic value. For example:
If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere. —Frank A. Clark
Yes, it’s possible to gain something from obstacles as a result of the broader perspective they provide—if you approach them in the appropriate frame of mind. But that doesn’t mean you should go looking for them or avoid taking paths that are obstacle-free. Nor should you go around confusing the obstacle with the path.
What Do You Want?
The path is the path and an obstacle is an obstacle: something that is in your way or hinders progress. In order for either a path or an obstacle to exist, you must first identify a destination: a place or a desired state of affairs you want to get to; something you want to change.
An object, situation, or set of circumstances isn’t an obstacle unless or until it comes between you and your destination (the change you want to make). The collapse of a bridge is only an obstacle if you need to cross that particular bridge in order to get somewhere you really want to be. If you don’t care one way or the other whether you get to that place, you can just turn around and go somewhere else. You don’t have to figure out how to deal with the obstacle because there isn’t one.
If you don’t have a destination or desire you really care about, there’s no need to identify a path from here to there. And if you’re not going anywhere, nothing can get in your way. That sounds about as profound as the other quotes, but all it is is the status quo, and there’s nothing profound about that.
Obstacles don’t mean anything, in and of themselves. (They don’t even exist apart from whatever they’re in the way of.)
We automatically pay more attention to their presence than we do to their absence because of the brain’s negativity bias. In addition, the brain is always looking for problems to solve. So we’re more likely to notice when things don’t go smoothly or according to plan and to just accept the situation when they do, as if there’s nothing noteworthy about that and nothing to be learned.
If you perceive something to be an obstacle, check to see what—if anything—it’s preventing you from doing or being—or where it’s preventing you from going. If you don’t really want what’s on the other side of the obstacle, there’s no point in worrying about it or trying to overcome it. You can just turn around and go somewhere else.