Path to happiness is through suffering, and it is not linear

You missed this fundamental insight to life. You need to suffer a lot to experience even a glimmer of happiness and it is not as straightforward as experiencing the lows to know what the high feels like, because it is not even connected. You suffer because you have to and you may achieve happiness out of it, but it is not the opposite feeling of the suffering you have endured.

Take a child. There is a lot of suffering in raising one. Human babies unlike animals don’t start walking the moment they are born. They take a full year to do that, and so much more to develop other aspects of their life. Until then you have to take care of them. If you don’t they would die, as simple as that. And the only reason they are in this world is because of you. You have to take responsibility for that. Suck it up, put your head down, give up all those things you loved, and take care of them. One rare day you child might give you a kiss that would make you feel so happy. But you aren’t taking care of them for that kiss. Irrespective of whether that kiss comes or not, you just take care of them, because you need to own up to it.

This same thing applies to romantic relationships, career, health, just about everything in life. It’s easy to dismiss things by drawing parallels and saying you are not getting enough back from what you are giving. But that’s where the issue lies. Happiness and suffering are not linear. You just have to suffer at relationships and at career, and at some point you may be happy, but you don’t suffer in order to be happy, you suffer because you have to.

And this is what you never understood. The moment there was suffering, you escaped. You didn’t want to deal with it. You would quit jobs and relationships and not just turn a blind eye, but deeply damage that personal and professional relationship so that there is no going back.

You would always ask people if they were happy and try to figure out why. You wanted to be happy too, but you just didn’t want to suffer. You would rather run away or numb it with alcohol than to experience suffering. For all your smarts, I wish you had figured this. Or maybe you did and didn’t want to suffer despite that. It was easier to leave than suffer for you. After all, it was easy for you. It’s the rest of us that are struggling with the consequences of your act. I miss you, but it may still just be miniscule compared to what your poor parents must be going through. And you couldn’t even take responsibility for that. Yeah sure you were randomly placed on this planet, but there were still 2 people through who you came who loved you endlessly. And you couldn’t understand that you had to struggle for them, or for so many others, or most of all for you. You had to struggle for yourself for you alone to be happy.

You wanted happiness, but just didn’t want the suffering.

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