Personal Experience

I’ve lived the average sheltered life throughout my childhood all the way up to my early adult years. Even now at 30 years of age, I am priviledged to live in a first world country, where systems are in place for me to not have to worry too much about health or homelesness. In fact, I’ve actively and consciously persued forms of discomfort such as the gym and boxing, in order to nurture a stronger foundation for myself as an average middle-aged man. Short of proactively seeking such opportunities, life in a first-world country in the 21st century does not ask much of you physically. What used to be a struggle for survival, led by an excruciating amount of pain and suffering cultivating, mining, factory working, or whatever other manual labor you could think of from centuries past.

The current state of affairs is more akin to an obese cat groomed to indulge and consume without as much as a thought put into it, mainly for the sake of productivism, but perhaps most ironic of all, for its own sake: you would not want to have to carry any extra cognitive baggage throughout your already stressful and cerebrally demanding days. The average room temperature IQ human in modern society is now expected to be literate in politics, food safety, gender studies, pop culture, engineering, medicine, and god knows what next with the advent of AI systems. For a chimp brain that hasn’t even fully come down the tree in biological time, this spiraling death machine is incomprehensible, the likes of which has never been seen EVER, and will likely never be seen before the heat death of the Universe.

Is suffering even a real thing?

Bypassing or coping with negative emotions may be in fact an impediment to one’s well-being as it diverts one from the lack of the eternal in their lives

This quote is perhaps my favorite so far from doing a little bit of reading on the subject of human suffering. It is true that the blanket statement of “suffering and negative emotions are always bad, positive things are always good” proveably does not lead to a happier, more fulfilled life. We’ve all had those days and nights where no matter how many “positive” hacks and content we indulge in, our overstimulated emotions do not respond, sometimes at all. We end up in a situation where an emotional reset is the only way out from a train of apathy.

I can say for myself how important it is to take myself off the dopamine track for at least an hour or two everyday, whether through muscle training or language studying, after which my brain is capable of deep-thinking and proper “productive” work, whereas attempts at recreating that flow state during the ADHD-riddled midday feels close to impossible.

“But how does that even relate to suffering bro?” Well maybe not directly, as I am not gonna pretend to be suffering physically or mentally in my heated appartment. The idea does translate more generally though when you think of true bliss as only appreciated to its full extent when having experienced the flip side, slugged through the bad and the ugly this world has to offer, which does include a non-negligible amount of suffering.

Where am I going with this?

If you end up taking one concept away from all this yapping, let it be this:

Do not seek to run away/eliminate all forms of discomfort in your life, that is a fool’s errand, and a trap. Instead, find ways to appreciate all the bliss in your daily life, and be ready for the unavoidable, but deeply educational, forms of suffering coming your way.

Until Tomorrow