A marathon settles nothing. The route ends where it starts, and a car could cover the distance in half an hour. People train for months anyway and arrive before dawn to run it. The finisher takes home a medal a factory stamped for a few cents and an ache that lasts a week. By every economic measure the effort is waste, and the finisher calls it the best thing they did all year.
The scarcity era blurred hardship into challenge. Hardship is difficulty imposed as the price of survival. Challenge is difficulty chosen as the expression of a life. A double shift worked under threat of eviction and a long run on a free morning can exhaust the same body. The difference sits in who decided.
If nothing forces effort, does effort stop? The people running unrequired miles before work already answered. The training happens in the hours left over after obligation, unpaid and unassigned, and it happens anyway.
The scarcity era priced attempts in survival. Leaving a job to build something new risked the rent, so the attempt competed against the mortgage and usually lost. In the age of abundance, an attempt still costs effort and the risk of public failure, but it stops costing the roof. A person can fail and begin again with the household intact.
No authority will issue the assignment. Each person picks their challenge. The age of abundance removes the suffering nobody wanted and keeps the difficulty worth pursuing.
— Chiaroscuro Joven