life is suffering

Happiness seemed to be a universal goal, something everyone agreed to be unequivocally good for life, and good for the world. However, as I grow older, the thought grows stranger. The realizations came slowly, but I no longer make decisions in life based on what would make me happy. It isn't that happiness doesn't feel absolutely amazing, but that it seems like a worthless goal. My relationship with happiness changed as I grew up.

At first, it was admiration, imagination, dreaming. My friends and I would gather around the lunch table and proclaim great riches. One wanted a Veyron, another an Aventador, and me an R8. Rohan actually owned an Audi, and accompanied his father to the service center on occasion. I could never forget the day - he opened his bag to reveal a large book. On the front, in beautiful colour, the Audi R8. English, Math, EVS - I was studying the same book in every class. The Audi R8 catalouge. Every day I would ask for him to bring it to school again, and every time I would spend most of the day on a different section. 520 Nm at 6000rpm, or 600 Nm at 8000rpm with Quattro? Blue with grey sideblades, or white with black rims? Finally, he decided to let me keep the book, and to this day - I have an Audi R8 buyers guide sitting on my bookshelf. Life was simple, I had to get a job, and get enough money to buy an R8 (and a second car for my family), and life would be made.

In a few years, I understood the reality that material possessions alone would not make my life. It wasn’t as simple as having an R8, I also needed to have a “cool” day-to-day life. Of course, a 9-5 job was out of the question. A cool life should be filled with worldwide travel, freedom, and fame. Engineer did not fit within any twisting of this definition. I could be a DJ. I would create cool music and play concerts across the world. After all, it seemed easy - I just had to let my creativity flow. A quick search through the app store leaderboards led me to a music creation app. I had to simply add to the samples with appropriate repetition and timing. I will never forget the post-exam bus rides, when I was allowed to have my phone at school. Reclining in the back seats, mixing and mashing beats, I could already taste the ingredients for worldwide success. I took it straight to SoundCloud, however, to tepid success. Youtuber could be cool too! If I got popular enough, I would just have to hold a camera to myself doing anything I desire, and it would pay for all my desires. I followed myself around with my mother’s camera, using free editing software, and an old tripod I found in the attic. This was so easy! I needed people to watch my videos, and life would be made.

AVICII committed suicide. The face of EDM across the world. He had everything I could dream of and more. The world was in his palm, but he couldn't scrape together a reason to keep living. Soon enough, like many of my peers, all my favourite music was filled with rap about drugs, numbing the pain, and suicide. Lil peep, 6dogs, I looked up to these people as idols, all I wanted was to be them. To do something I love, and have the freedom and resources to live in any way I please. Neither is with us any longer. The people who lived my dream life couldn't bear to exist in it, so why was I dreaming of it? What was I missing?

Life will never be “made’. The nature of our existence is a balance between happiness and suffering. Evolutionarily, it would be disastrous for our species to be capable of satisfaction, peace, or tranquility. The unhappy one, always chasing the next goal, always unsatisfied with their present self, and always pushing the limits would be the high fitness gene pool to be passed on. By definition, considering the “hedonic treadmill” nature of the human brain, happiness cannot exist without suffering. If your life is full of happiness, your brain adjusts its baseline to be higher, resulting in an equal amount of suffering throughout life. Societally, our brains process negative emotion in a much higher capacity than positive emotion. Why is it that YouTubers will always complain about hate, even though much greater than the majority of their comments are positive and encouraging? Humans simply aren't built to remain happy. We can be happy momentarily, but it will always be fleeting.

Humans are creatures of storytelling, and the most popular stories of our time are those of superheroes. While many complain about the formulaic scripts of these stories, this formula is the reason for their success. Superhero stories resonate with people irrespective of language, culture, or age. Even historically, the hero archetype is one of the most common. How do all these stories begin? Heroes are born from suffering. Be it Batman witnessing the murder of his parents, Spiderman allowing the murder of his dear Uncle Ben, or Superman being the last remnant of a planet-wide extinction, heroes are born from suffering. What differentiates a superhero from a villain, is the reaction to this suffering. While a villain becomes bitter and resentful, a hero rises meteorically through the suffering to become larger than life. [The prison escape - “The Dark Knight Rises”]. However hard fate might hit you, bravery will take you far.

In clinical psychology, it is accepted today that, a person can indeed rise to conquer a challenge they currently find unbearable. By breaking a challenge into its smallest parts, and approaching each part individually, slowly increasing the difficulty, we observe that people can overcome phobias. People don't ever become less scared of these challenges, they actually seem to grow braver, ready to face greater and greater challenges. They become mini-heroes.

The universe is cruel. Humans are diabolical creatures. Destiny seems sadistic. “Life is suffering” is a phrase I have heard more than I liked to.

But we must face this suffering with bravery.

Here you find one of the reasons I write these posts. It takes a lot out of me to write them. It scares me to expose my naive thoughts. But I do it all in the hopes that by facing this suffering voluntarily, and head-on, I will find the courage to shine a light on the beauty of life that I truly believe exists.

For I have seen glimpses of it, and you will too.

I chase not happiness, but suffering.