Suffering... and Paddling Upstream, Against the Current

We humans are strange creatures, much of the time.

I periodically find myself wondering why so many of us — and I'm not entirely excluding myself, here — seem to deliberately (and often repeatedly) choose "the hard way" to do things, rather than the more straightforward way.

Maybe I am excluding myself — at least to some extent — because a substantial part of my life's work has revolved the constant quest to always find the lowest point of the proverbial fence to jump over. In fact, if I can, I will probably walk around the fence (or crawl under it), so I don't have to jump, at all.

My college buddy Henry once observed "You'll put an almost insane amount of effort into figuring out how to NOT put any effort into something!"

It's true, sadly...

Of course, part of all this is purely personal opinion... I happen to believe the world would be a better place if people were more willing to "think through" things, rather than muscle their way through them.

There are certain ways in which I am not that good at "being human" one of those being all that "competitive posturing" many engage in, as central to most things they undertake. To get back to the "jumping the fence" example from above:

"Yeah, I climbed over the fence at the tallest and most challenging part, where all the razor wire is! Look at what a badass I am!"

That is the point at which I just roll my eyes.

Who gives a shit? What's more, while you're busy gloating over your superior fence climbing skills, did it even cross your mind that one side-effect of your suffering antics is that several people are now tasked/saddled with tending to the bleeding cuts on your arms? And other people have to fix the parts of the fence you broke, with your heorics?

I don't actually care much about fence climbing and posturing.

However, I spend a lot of time in the self-development, consciousness and "enlightenment" industry, and I am always baffled by the number of people who actively choose some form of suffering, operating under the twisted perspective that wisdom (or even just "contentment") in life isn't really a thing unless you've endured a minimum of twenty years of hardship and misery to obtain it.

It is almost like there is "status" and "ego value" attached to protracted suffering.

Back in the day when I spent a lot of time at various spiritual and self-development retreats, I saw this so often it was almost ridiculous.

Whether it is a case of "misery loves company" or more along the lines of psychological addition to pain it always struck me as rather ridiculous.

What struck me as even more ridiculous was the fact that the few people who openly admitted that they had simply chosen not to suffer were often looked at askance — and even questioned — and gently informed that they were in denial.

WTF, mate? Those who actually have what people are paying to have are... delusional?

It's one of the reasons I now view that whole ball of wax with considerable skepticism.

I don't want to paddle against the current!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great weekend!

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Created at 2024-09-14 00:45 PDT
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