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Is struggle inherent in life?

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cowardescent

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I've been thinking about this. Is it possible for someone to rarely experience emotional distress, anxiety, sadness etc...in their life and have pleasurable moments, at worst boring ones?

It seems that everyone I know does not enjoy life. My mother says she has never really enjoyed being alive but discounts suicide, my father doesn't ever discuss these things with me.

Is everyones life pretty much difficult?
 
Yes, everyone's life is difficult, and struggle and suffering is one of the most fundamental aspects of being alive as a conscious being on this plane of reality in which we appear to be incarnate.

I read a Buddhist parable of some sort a while back which I tried to find for you but could not, so my summary is going to be kind of weak but the essence of it basically was that the entire history of man can be summed up in 2 words - "they suffer".

That said, it is possible for sure to suffer less - and some people for sure seem to have an easier starting point than others. Referring to Buddhist philosophy again, you would be taught that the way to be free of suffering is to free yourself of attachment. Other philosophies will teach different things, but almost all of them agree that there are ways to suffer less. But everyone has their own struggle and however one chooses to deal with it suffering and struggle are a part of life.

This doesn't have to be a negative - although for sure, perhaps, this would be a natural perception - it's just a part of reality. Joy, love and positive things are part of life as well, to some degree, but no-one's life is really "easy", although some might seem that way from certain perspectives. Make of that what you will.
 
i think everybody faces challenges in life, to different extents.

but we have a choice. we can choose how to respond to challenges. when i realized that it was pretty liberating.

alasdair
 
Just gonna chime in again to respond to some more specific things in your post, since it occurs to me that without addressing them or without being given more help interpreting the realisation that struggle is, indeed, inherent in life, you might come away from this with an unnecessarily pessimistic outlook... also this is just a topic that interests me philosophically.


cowardescent said:
I've been thinking about this. Is it possible for someone to rarely experience emotional distress, anxiety, sadness etc...in their life and have pleasurable moments, at worst boring ones?
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It's possible yes, but typically not without struggle, and a good degree of luck. Also, suffering is relative, so for someone who was born into royalty, won the genetic lottery, and never really had to want for anything, having a special occasion ruined by a delayed delivery of their favourite champagne will cause them to suffer - as will the loss of their inherited wealth either through personal financial ineptitude or some other personal failing, or just unavoidable circumstance like war or a natural disaster - leading them to need to live more frugally, but still in brick and mortar habitation with running water and electricity like most of us do, hopefully.

On the flipside, someone living a typically middle class lifestyle, or even in fact, just in a country with generally reliable working indoor sanitation, will find it a massive inconvenience if their toilet breaks temporarily, whereas someone who grew up where open defecation is still the norm and open sewers abound would presumably be grateful not to have to shit into a hole or hovering on the shore of a literal river of shit, even if they had to walk outside their home to do so. My point is that this sliding scale goes all the way up and all the way down and someone who appears to live a life of luxury will not be free from suffering - in fact in many ways they will be more vulnerable to it as they will be so used to pinning their happiness on external things, and this is true even if they never actually lose these things and die happy, although it would be fair to say they would have lived a particularly lucky life, were this the case.


cowardescent said:
It seems that everyone I know does not enjoy life. My mother says she has never really enjoyed being alive but discounts suicide, my father doesn't ever discuss these things with me.
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This to me is very sad. It's quite possible to enjoy life while accepting that struggle and suffering are an inevitable part of it. I would say that despite the inevitability of suffering, it is by no means a default or healthy state to never enjoy being alive, in fact most people would consider this to be a treatable psychological dysfunction which one should seek help for. There are many things in life to enjoy and that make life worth living, although for sure, they can be hard to find at times.


cowardescent said:
Is everyones life pretty much difficult?
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Again - yes. But the fact that everyone's life is difficult and that we all need to find a way to accept this does not mean we should accept that struggle and suffering are all there is, and all we can hope for. If you or anyone you know feels this way, they are depressed, and the reasons for this are in some sense immaterial - there are still ways to be less depressed.

Granted again, the reasons for someone's depression may appear more or less understandable. If I was kidnapped, had both arms amputated, and was incarcerated in a North Korean gulag with no apparent hope of rescue I would probably become very depressed and start to feel life was hopeless, and most people could understand why more than they would understand the tantrum of a silver-spooned aristocrat over a delayed champagne delivery. Although even then hopefully I would not allow this depression to manifest into such a nihilistic state of mind that I would steal bread from a starving child, for example - and most of us would like to think that were we born into the life of this hypothetical aristocrat, we would not throw tantrums and make other people's lives harder over such trivial things.

I guess what I am trying to illustrate here is the value of trying to find a way out of depression for as long as we feel in any way able, and finding a way to act as a sponge for the suffering of life for those who cannot - without using words like "duty" or implying any kind of moral imperative because I think that's an ethically tricky road to go down and not necessarily helpful for those who do feel truly hopeless. Anyway I hope you take something useful from this.
 
I think not. Some people are very wise. Everyone has hardships (sickness and death being facts) but not all crumble or sucumb to weakness. Many lacking guide hither here and fro, their emotions change with the passing of a wind, with the reading of a newspaper headline. But others have a peace which is unshakeable because there is a firm groundwork set in place.
 
^ It occurs to me reading that that the words suffering and struggle are of course not synonymous, although in my previous posts I have used them as if they are. Not everyone struggles against suffering, and not everyone experiences their struggle as suffering... at least not forever. Everyone has known suffering and struggle for sure though, I would think, even if only in their youth... I would think it takes a certain maturity of mind not to... although maybe even then there are those with a rare gift or insight from a very early age.
 
Its all about point of view and the angle at which you look at it. (life)

I try to control what I can, and be stoic as possible about the rest.

What's chaos for the mouse is pure ecstasy for the cat. A shitty day or life to you might be heaven to someone else.
 
alasdairm said:
we can choose how to respond to challenges. when i realized that it was pretty liberating.
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Exactly right. We all have the ability to choose how we frame our life experiences. That's why two people can experience the same trauma, and one can move on to become happy and fulfilled, and the other can dwell on it and succumb to fear and hate and despair and hate their life. Our thoughts are not a prison, but we can make them a prison. We tell ourselves our story, and if you make an effort to tell yourself a positive story, you will find that, although it's difficult at first, you can change your patterns of thought and that will slowly change who you are and your entire perception of life. You are not stuck with the way you think and feel, you can change it with effort and dedication. And most of all, with belief. I think most people who are depressed long-term are constantly reinforcing their reasons for depression to themselves. They're tearing themselves down inside, over and over. . My girlfriend struggles a lot because of a bad childhood. She tells herself that she's worthless and that nothing is going to get better for her all the time. She tells herself it's too late for her. So, of course, that's how life feels for her. I was depressed for years, too, and stuck in opiate addiction and a bad marriage. I fully believed I was stuck, I fully believed I was a piece of shit instead of my then-wife, I fully believed it would never get better, that I was too damaged. It was a slow progression, I didn't believe those things at first but one day at a time, one lie at a time, I built my own personal hell.

Fortunately I snapped out of it eventually and told myself a different story. It took work but I totally changed my life and my way of viewing things. Life is still a struggle but it's a beautiful struggle that is full of good things as well as bad.
 
You must overcome suffering in order to develop as a person, of that much I am certain. The type and severity of suffering will depend on the individual and their environment, of course, but if you have absolutely nothing to overcome, no challenges in life, you will not mentally mature past childhood.
 
If we're talking suffering in the Buddhist sense, then that is a mistranslation. The actual translation is "dissatisfactoriness". It means that no matter what we do in life, no matter how many desires we attain, we will always experience ennui. Everyone experiences this -- everyone, without exception.

If we're talking struggle as in adversity in the human world. No, not everyone deals with that. Some people have very easy lives, padded with money and affluence, which insulates them from having any real hardship. Their struggle is minimal. I've met people whose lives consist of cruising around the world and enjoying the best that cultures and nations have to offer. It's all they do. If they struggle, it's because the impermanence of their lives takes hold... i.e. their bodies start to fail, etc. But in terms of every day struggle? Nope.

If we're talking struggle in terms of pain, that is unavoidable. The seedling has to use all its stored energy to break through the husk of the seed, pushing its way to the surface of the soil, finally reaching sunlight. Many seeds don't make it... the soil is too deep, a critter comes along and eats the seed, the seedling makes it to the surface but suddenly winter has a second round. There are no guarantees, but growth is impossible without pain. Even the forming of new neural networks is uncomfortable, it's why so many people shy away from learning new things. But growth = pain, at least on this material plane of existence.

If we're talking struggle as in suffering, then most of our suffering is due to taking the wrong path over and over. We take the wrong path because the world is full of distractions and deceptions telling us to do things that aren't in our best interest, and they do this when we are too young to know any better. Some of the deceptions are intentional and some are just due to ignorance. We live in a very convincing construct and it's understandable why so many people buy into it. After years of being isolated due to illness - and it has a been a very painful, pleasureless isolation at many points - I have realized that all the shit I have been wasting my time on that was just not the right path. You can easily squander an entire lifetime chasing dead ends. There's something to be said for being a hermit for a while, I think more people could benefit from it.

Henry Cornelius Agrippa, who wrote the "Three Books of Occult Philosophy", one of the only books you'll ever need to get to know the basis of the western esoteric occult traditions, famously said:

"Whosoever therefore shall know himself shall know all things in himself; especially he shall know God, according to whose Image he was made; he shall know the world, the resemblance of which he beareth; he shall know all creatures, with which he Symbolizeth; and what comfort he can have and obtain, from Stones, Plants, Animals, Elements, Heavens, from Spirits, Angels, and every thing, and how all things may be fitted for all things, in their time, place, order, measure, proportion and Harmony, and can draw and bring to himself, even as a Loadstone Iron."

It doesn't matter what you pursue in life or study; it doesn't matter what other people think of what you're doing or how valid it is; if the process is teaching you something about yourself and leading you to truth, then your wisdom will grow.

I really believe that this what we are all here to do.
 
cowardescent said:
I've been thinking about this. Is it possible for someone to rarely experience emotional distress, anxiety, sadness etc...in their life and have pleasurable moments, at worst boring ones?

It seems that everyone I know does not enjoy life. My mother says she has never really enjoyed being alive but discounts suicide, my father doesn't ever discuss these things with me.

Is everyones life pretty much difficult?
Click to expand...

A life without difficulty is not worth living. Yin without Yang is just not our dualistic reality.

If you do not challenge yourself with a quest, like all other life seem to do, then you are not being the fittest of humans.

We so called modern people have forgotten that we are to have rites of passage and that is how I define what you call difficulties, emotional distress, anxiety, sadness etc.

If you do not have a goal that cause some stress in you, you might not be enjoying life as much as you could.

You would likely live longer --- as believers do, --- but you would have to live in their delusional state.

Regards
DL
 
I agree. It's something I've learned with time... people need something to do, to dedicate themselves to. At least for me, that's been how I've discovered how to be fulfilled in life. Of course there is struggle, life is hard, the past two years have been awful for me, really, but also amazing, at the same time. But the only reason I can say they were also amazing is because I've been spending the vast majority of my time working towards something I love doing. As they say, idle hands are the devil's playground. Not that I believe in god or the devil, but that saying is imparting some wisdom nonetheless.
 
This was the central argument of german philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who saw struggle as the point and meaning of life. He was a dreary bastard but he recognised that our Will can overcome our circumstances and we can make the world appear to us as we wish with enough effort. He saw the struggle as struggle TOWARDS life.
 
Keeping the balance between spirituality and life, more or less may be a bit harder for all of us. I think life it's what around us, all environments, what they hold, metaphorically speaking -- spells -- so to say in one word. But these aren't wizards, they are fraudsters, pataters who sells bullshit but you see I have too many school years, school of hard knocks which's the hardest, I don't trust no one i'm suspicious, so be serious and take ur bone back cuz I don't like half-measures, boss. Cuz people love when you tell stories, nice lies so you need to learn how to fool them but it's okay while you know who you are, the purpose justify the means and you aren't hypocrite, when you look in the mirror you are honest with yourself and you know where you start from and i'm tired to take you on circle back like a schooled taxi driver which throws you a tangled speech, not explicit at all, I avoid to arouse suspicion. Let me lie you cuz I lie you beautiful, reality isn't pink, isn't on wheels there's no point to tell you what I know, to tell you what I want, better I jive lie. And I would tell you more but my consciousness doesn't let me.
 
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