My childhood home is situated smack in the middle of a hill, so going out to get the mail as a kid meant a near-vertical slog, and walking the dog involved either dragging a reluctant border collie up the slope, thighs burning, or running full tilt down, trying not to faceplant and roll down half a mile of straight pavement. 

That circumstance, combined with the fact that the only form of exercise I was willing to do until I was 14 was some sort of hike, meant that I spent most of my childhood and teenage years dragging myself up and down endless numbers of hills. 

When I finally got the memo that opting out of physical education class wasn’t an option, my exercise of choice was jogging. My neighborhood did not have the option of a flat surface, and so I was introduced to the uniquely painful experience of running uphill, a feeling equaled only by the euphoria of running downhill.  

Running uphill feels like jogging through syrup. Time slows down, and suddenly you’re aware of every drop of sweat, every muscle in your legs working and every breath that struggles its way in and out of your lungs. And running downhill is the purest distillation of happiness I’ve yet found. Of course, it’s always over in only a few seconds. 

But you need one to get the other. 

We talk about going uphill as a scary thing, something to avoid. It’s like swimming upstream — why not go with the flow instead? Why make things harder for yourself? If you have the choice to climb up a hill or to go around, the conventional wisdom is that you should take the path of least resistance. 

I see it differently. For me, running uphill, or to put it more simply, struggling in order to achieve happiness, is, for better or for worse, a fundamental part of my psychology. My childhood of dog-walking and jogging adventures means that I can’t understand a reward without first fighting for it; I simply must take what I affectionately call “the scenic route” with absolutely everything. 

Essentially, when confronted with a problem or a goal, I have to walk in circles until I smack my head on what I’ve been looking for the entire time. Even if it’s something other people find easy, I won’t see it until I’ve suffered a little. It’s inevitable, and part of my personality, and much trial and error has only proven that even the process of knowing myself does not exempt me from this unfortunate way of being.  

It took me two years to find the clubs that I now run. It took me five years to learn how to make friends, and I’m still learning how to keep them. I get lost nine out of ten times I go to a new place. My first time taking the driver’s test, I forgot which color meant “Go.” 

I’m used to it now, as are the people around me. The first time I try a sport, everyone gives me an appropriately wide berth, and I am not allowed to try cooking anything new without someone else on hand in an adjoining room to put out the eventual fire. It’s just a part of my personality — some people are good singers, or secret trivia geeks. I require three to five business days to comprehend anything new. But I fought that part of myself for many years. 

The dangerous thing about taking the scenic route was that all too often, I convinced myself that I was taking the superhighway. I would put my head down and focus on the path in front of me, only to find out that I’d passed the same tree three times. 

I can, and do, master skills, improve myself and learn new things. But I know that I have to make pretty much every possible mistake on the way. I’ve learned that instead of circumventing the way my brain works, it’s easier to just sit back and enjoy the ride — it might be able to teach you a few things. 

This is the long way of saying that the scenic route is best enjoyed when you’re actually looking at the scenery — by which I mean that you should take every moment as the gift it is, not as another second closer to your ultimate destination. 

You don’t need to be living or looking months or years ahead every single second. You can take a moment between point A and point B to stop the car, take a few pictures and say something extremely dumb to whoever came with you.

Life is more of a road trip than an airplane journey. It’s a lot of careening down hills and a lot more struggling up them. I think the most important thing I learned in my years living midway up a hill is that sometimes, you have to live some ups and downs before you get back to the same place. And it’s okay to spend more time on the uphill. 

If you have a pressing problem you need advice on, or a response to this, email [email protected] with “Best Guess” in the subject line.

Mika Ellison is a Medill senior. She can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.