Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.

The saying frames difficulty as a feature rather than a flaw of human life. “Challenges” supply narrative tension—without obstacles, experience becomes flat and unremarkable—while “overcoming” provides the deeper payoff: a sense of purpose earned through effort. The quote aligns with a broadly existential and self-help tradition in which meaning is not discovered ready-made but constructed through striving, resilience, and growth. It also implies an ethic of agency: life’s significance increases when one actively engages problems instead of avoiding them. In this view, fulfillment comes less from comfort than from the transformation that occurs when adversity is met and mastered.