More Suffering
August 15th, 2022
"It does not matter what you bear, but how you bear it." — Seneca
"To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." — Friedrich Nietzsche
"When it is all over you will not regret having suffered; rather you will regret having suffered so little, and suffered that little so badly." — St. Sebastian Valfre
"Don’t throw away your suffering. Touch your suffering. Face it directly, and your joy will become deeper. You know that suffering and joy are both impermanent. Learn the art of cultivating joy. Practice like this, and you come to the third turning of the Third Noble Truth, the “Realization” that suffering and happiness are not two. When you reach this stage, your joy is no longer fragile. It is true joy." — Thich Nhat Hanh
I've met teenage millionaires rich off crypto. C-level executives at billion-dollar companies. A few uncles of mine own property evaluated in the millions and have more stashed away in stocks. People my age in their early 20s, who are living like kings.
And when you take these folks down to a shopping mall or park, they look no different from anyone there. You can't tell if they're happier than John Doe. If you knew them before, you can't tell if all that power really made a difference to their personality, disgarding the boastful, insecure lads who need the validation. But to be fair, even before the money they needed validation.
The suffering still continues for them. Even before, when God was God and money wasn't our God, there would still be suffering. You had Catholic priests diddling children and various Christian denominations executing violent crimes. No matter what value you attribute to life or suffering, it's still going to happen. No matter what preventative measures in whatever fantasy world you dream up of, suffering still continues to exist, whether you're a prince, king, CEO, rich guy, whatever. It sounds so cliche and obvious, but sadly I can't name five people in my life who would agree with me.
Oh! But the suffering is so nicer as a CEO! Surely! Uhh, yeah. Being responsible for the welfar of thousands, surely you won't feel guilty when shit inevitably hits the fan. Yeah. Honestly, you'd have to be heartless bastard to even withstand all the responsibility.
The true wealth that is worth its weight is gold is re-learning how to interpret the suffering. As children, we have the right approach to it. When we suffer, we suffer it thoroughly and express it. While as children we may not know exactly what is happening, we know exactly how we are feeling at the time. As we grow older (young adults in particular), we understand what is happening, but we do not know how we feel about it. (Unless, you're in touch with yourself. You had good role models.)
And for some, not all, we unlearn our ability to understand our feelings. We cease to stop strongly feeling. Our culture is a main contributor to this, the fact that we teach ourselves to always be happy and excited (extroversion much...?) And to do this, we put on a "mask." For human beings, I do not think it is that easy to "just put on a face." We were not designed to "just put on a face" or to "lie." It is the same concept for actors or actresses too, you have to lie to yourself and convince yourself of the lie to really play the part. Growing up is an elusive scam of lying to yourself to appease authority.
We learn to lie to ourselves as a part of childhood and adolescence. Why? To avoid suffering. To avoid pain. To do as the authorities in our lives tell us to, or at least appear to it. But lying to yourself about your feelings creates a massive disconnect between how you exist and how you think you exist.
This causes a sadness to build up inside, a frustration. Rage. Maybe something dark, alive inside that melds and swims and pulls you down with the current. The body keeps score and knows when you're lying to yourself. And the facade of putting on a "face" kills you on the inside.
And that cyclical frustration of denying your feelings and circling back to them anyway destroys people. It drives them insane. Life is full of suffering, but if you hide it and never express it it will destroy you. Especially if you cannot process it, or if you cannot even fathom to accept that you are indeed suffering.
That's why I think it's so important to accept your suffering. Do whatever you want with the suffering, but accept it wholeheartedly.