Venting I wasn't wrong about life

[Aplev]

Back when I was a teenager, I used to think that life sucked, was a complete joke and just plain absurd. Several years later, I think life sucks, is a complete joke and just plain absurd.

That is not to say I think the same way I did back when I was a teenager. I do think differently and my life has changed. But, I feel more like I have changed because I gave up trying to leave this world on my own, and not really because I feel happier towards it. I am more tolerant, it's easier for me to remain calm, I got a job, I am living on my own, the point is, I am suffering less than before. But, I still think the same about life. All that I've done, is because I got tired of suffering, but not really because I became content with life. My suffering has decreased, but I am by no means happy.

I don't think people have the right to choose. I don't think there are desires that can be satisfied. And while everyone has goals they were never able to achieve and probably never will (because they weren't given such thing), I still can't get what I want, and I still feel horrible. I am still stuck with my unmet needs. I am still stuck with my unachievable goals. With my unfulfilled desires. At the end of the day, it's more about accepting whatever I was given, and then going on with life. But how some people can be happy with just that? I think that's also something that was given to them. Me, I can't do it not because I don't have the capacity, but because I wasn't given such a capacity. Of course, things would change if I were to find that we all have a choice but... the more I reflect about life, the more I observe life, the more I interact with other people, in other words, the more I live, the more I believe nobody has any power of choice, no power to take any decision. And my main reason to believe this is statistics. In all ages of humanity, there have always been happy and unhappy people. For whatever reason. Because they were poor, didn't have fame, didn't feel like they had done anything significant for others, or they had all of what other people wanted but they still feel unloved or not enough, and so unhappy after all. The point being that there was no point in time when absolutely everyone in the world was happy. And if everyone really had the power to choose, then why they choose to be unhappy? It just doesn't make any sense.

So for me, the truth of life is that no one gets any power to choose anything in their lives, and some desires simply can never get fulfilled, and some people will always be unhappy, even if suffering less. In other words, my prolonged stay in this world has only reconfirmed my previous ideas about life. The only difference is that now I can explain it in more thorough terms, and my suffering has decreased.

I believe the cause of unhappiness is desire. But how can we stop desiring? Isn't desiring what makes us humans?

The idea of not desiring, of just living with whatever you were given, little or much, without thinking about how others got more or less than you, just living, sounds relieving. But at the same time, terrifying. To think that some people can be happy with so little, while others are happy with so much, to think of all that the people with little things are missing, even if they are unaware and yet happy... is terrifying to me. Maybe because I still have the desire to have the best, and I am still aware of it. Maybe because I feel guilty that I may have more than others, while feeling that I don't deserve it more than anyone else. Maybe because I still desire to desire, to be human, and equal to all.

I wonder how other people can be happy knowing they got more than others. Maybe they don't see it as more than others. Maybe they believe everyone has the power to choose, and so they could get the same that they have, if they chose so. I wonder if anyone else feels the same way, like even if you were able to feel happy, it wouldn't be fair that other people are still unhappy.

But hopefully, there is another world, somewhere in the vast Universe where we live. One world where all desires can be satisfied, and we can be just ourselves, without the need to change or adapt to anything. That is my hope.

 

[SilentSadness]

I think it's wrong to say that desire is the cause of suffering, after all someone being tortured feels pain regardless of their "desire" and it sounds like a way to blame the sufferer. No, in reality life makes everyone suffer no matter what happens, and you seem to have gotten the worse end of this. My only hope is that my death will be soon and permanent, it's a fleeting dream of mine to rest eternally without the sorrowful struggles of living. I hope that you find what you wish for, I guess I won't any time soon.

 

[Aplev]

I think it's wrong to say that desire is the cause of suffering, after all someone being tortured feels pain regardless of their "desire" and it sounds like a way to blame the sufferer. No, in reality life makes everyone suffer no matter what happens, and you seem to have gotten the worse end of this. My only hope is that my death will be soon and permanent, it's a fleeting dream of mine to rest eternally without the sorrowful struggles of living. I hope that you find what you wish for, I guess I won't any time soon.

So I wasn't sure what to reply the first time I read your message, but I think I do now.

I think, logically speaking, even when someone is being tortured, the same idea applies, because in that case, the person is desiring to stop feeling the pain, and is suffering because of the existence of such desire. Logic aside, what I meant to say is that we cannot stop wishing, so suffering is inevitable. In the end, it may be a more sophisticated and complex way of saying the same thing you are saying. Also, I didn't mean to put the blame on the sufferer, although it may have sounded that way. Rather, and this is part of why I put it in this more sophisticated way, I was trying to reflect on something I heard a lot about (that "the cause of suffering is desire"). It was also a bit of a reply to that idea. My conclusion, in short, was that suffering is inevitable, because desire is inevitable. We desire for the pain to end, but it doesn't end. We desire to desire, we are done that way. So suffering is inevitable, even if people say "the cause of suffering is desire".

And yes, I have suffered a lot in life and continue to suffer, day after day, but so do many of us here. It doesn't stop my or anyone's pain I think, but it's at least comforting. So in that sense, thank you for your kindness and I hope we can both find peace soon rather than later.