Doing philosophy requires both patience and discipline, because philosophical inquiry requires long hours of hard work. One must be prepared to commit huge amounts of time to laboring over issues both difficult and subtle. People who avoid philosophy often complain that thinking about philosophical questions makes their heads hurt. This is unavoidable: if the answers seem to come easily to you, your inquiries almost certainly are superficial. To do philosophy, one must commit oneself to pain. Those who value truth recognize that there is no shortcut to it: every advance must be fought for tooth and nail.