A fox wants to be happy

reconciling with the unsatisfying reality of who I am as an ambitious individual

One idea that resonated strongly with me in 2022 was Tolstoy’s dilemma, explored by Isaiah Berlin in his piece “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” Berlin argues that Tolstoy was a “fox,” a gifted writer who perceived the subtleties of individual lives that can’t be distilled down to succinct principles, aspiring to be a “hedgehog,” a historian who understands the reality through a universal framework of laws and that this cognitive dissonance caused him tremendous intellectual pain. I could empathize deeply with this struggle not only because I identified as someone who is a fox wishing she was a hedgehog in Berlin’s terms but also because I recognized the source of my own unhappiness to be the discrepancy between my ideals for self more broadly and the perceived reality of who I was.

My high school self had no idea what I would be doing one year out of college. Part of the problem was that I was so focused on getting into a prestigious university then that I had not thought deeply about what I would do if the opportunities were offered to me. Despite the lack of expectation for a specific career path, one thing was clear: I would not be wishing away my 9-5, having lost the vigor and intensity to make something of my life. It felt unbearable wandering so aimlessly, let alone not having accomplished some externally validating success. I couldn’t forgive myself for seemingly wasting my time, even though I wasn’t sure what else I wanted to care about so deeply.

While some doses of happiness came by occasionally, none felt sustainable. The thrill of accomplishing goals faded as I adjusted to the new reality. Moments of joy from engaging conversations and aesthetic stimuli were fleeting, only serving as brief diversions from a more fundamental sense of existential dread and dissatisfaction with reality. I acutely missed the feeling of “being on a grind,” to summarize the emotional intensity, perception of progress, and all other related feelings that I craved for in one mode of being, which I considered to be at odds with becoming happy since the former implied desire for change originating from dissatisfaction with the current self. I feared being mediocre and enduring happiness seemed unattainable: The critical question was, how could I be happy in the present state of who I was if I always aspired to be someone more?

Thinking more about Tolstoy’s dilemma made me wonder why he chose to be miserable. Why does he neither accept that he is a fox and stop aspiring to be a hedgehog nor become a hedgehog himself? In hindsight, the answer seems obvious. On the one hand, I understood all too well why he couldn’t do so: he believed that his intellectual ideals and the reality of his self were uncompromisable as I felt so about mine. On the other hand, I realized not only that I am much more complicated than I previously judged, with some aspects of my life closer to my ideals than others, but also that I can choose to become happy. Having recognized that my fixed beliefs and ideals were the only constraint to my happiness, I decided to pursue happiness by accepting and appreciating my complex self as a reality at present but beginning to change so that I am closer to whom I imagined myself to be in the future.

The first step of this change was acknowledging that I had always wanted to become happy, even though I believed myself striving for meaning in life. I supposed happiness would come as a byproduct of the pursuit of meaning, with the latter, not the former, being the goal. This priority in quest had wreaked tremendous internal turmoil and anxiety: what I believed I should do often clashed with what I intuitively knew I wanted to do, especially in making career decisions, even as the range of decisions was already scoped to reflect the entire suite of values. For instance, going to med school was on the table until the first year of college, even though medicine was never my strong passion. Nevertheless, an honest look back made me realize that I had always made decisions aligned with my intuition of what I felt would make me happier. Only after choices were made in alignment with my instincts my understanding of self evolved, not in the opposite order as I believed. Allowing myself to focus on what I actually care about, what I enjoy, and what would make me happy rather than on what I thought I should care about was liberating.

With this deprioritization of ideals over intuitions on reality, I began to question my other beliefs. For one, I had refused to start learning a new language because I felt I would never be as good as a native speaker if I started learning one “so late.” However, I started learning French on Duolingo on a whim because my boyfriend speaks French natively. Day by day, I enjoyed the feeling of progress as I could convey and understand more complicated sentences, however primitive. The sense of working towards something, even if that end goal was neither clear nor seemingly attainable, supplied me with satisfaction with my everyday experience, giving me more energy to do just a little more.

The sense of improvement empowered me to believe that other aspects of my life could also be changed. Even if the macro conditions in life didn’t change much, an earlier bedtime and just a few more hours of sleep improved my mood dramatically, I noticed. Leaving the room and taking a walk made an apparent difference in my WFH days. I reckoned that there was no need to refuse to make the minor adjustments that would help me appreciate the present moment of existence, which is the only authentic fabric of reality that my consciousness experiences. Being more in tune with my current state cemented the thought that I only live in the present, not in the past or the future, and that the current state was a function of my history and the current environment. While I can aspire for my future self to be different, it was not quite fruitful to punish my present self for who I had been in the past. The enhanced focus on the present and the small concrete steps leading to tangible improvements across pillars of life empowered me to believe that the present self and, therefore, my future self can be changed.

Gradually, I felt empowered to influence and improve a larger and larger share of my life. With a new job and a new apartment on the horizon, I am excited to continue the struggle to be happier. I can forgive my present self, accept reality, and change my beliefs about who I am and the life I am living through. I can appreciate the present moments but aspire for a different reality in the future. My new framework feels ever more contradictory and confusing. But maybe that’s okay. I can believe in each thought and live as a fox, but happily.