The pain of living itself

Human beings by nature and being in reality meant to struggle to the last.

In this essay I am going to talk about many ideas around one main topic so it’s somewhat different topics in different sections somewhat. But the core idea is same.

We as human beings struggle with many things either in personal life, professional life and social life. We make constant feelings, decision, thinking, perceptions and others human feelings, and after that we still struggle with almost everything maybe it’s small or big. Then we tried to make it fix and work for the better. We do everything possible in our abilities to do and still people say that “life is too hard or I couldn’t figure things out in life”. Almost every human being on this planet struggle with this at some point in their life. In philosophy we call it “existential crisis” were we tend to question yourself, our work and almost everything at once and try to find something meaning into. Which is one thing to be noted that “Human beings doesn’t have any meaning at it core, the human is the first thing which has the urge to create meaning”. Though out history philosophers and thinker came up with many philosophies to live but I don’t want to name all of them and will go into much details so quickly in short most popular ones are:

Existentialism: Life has no meaning, but I will create one. Absurdism: Life has no meaning, but I don’t care I will still live on. (Humans beings themselves must imagine themselves happy) Nihilism: Life has no meaning and I don’t try to fix it just go on as it is. (Not something related to this but people sees other people pain and suffering and when those people take actions about their pain and turn them into something beautiful and meaningful into their life, other people tend to live in this space of romanticizing on that idea of pain for them to somewhat connect to them while not actually having that problem in the first place. But want to feel that pain but not the actual problems that pain brings and dwells on it.)

One of the big idea of belief I have about humans is that “We’re tend to contradicts yourself every time it’s like the snake moving in circle and biting it’s tale.”

If you really think of it solving your life is very easy and simple to say and do but actually doing it it’s hard within themselves for example your entire life would be fixed if you follow this:

• Wake up early but too early but at same time every day.
• Eat healthy food (but sometimes junk food for cravings).
• Exercise everyday.
• Do your daily work.
• Have great relationships in your personal, social and professional life.
• Don’t do anything bad or think of doing anything bad to others.
• Always be thankful for what you have and how you do it.
• Never compare yourself with others.
• Follow a daily routine with strict ethics and virtues according to what suits and benefits both the society and you.

If a human being from anywhere in this world would do this I have told your above their life would be fixed and deep down these are main areas of their life from which their main problem arises. But hardly or never you’re going to find a person who have all of these things in their life. Cause even if you live by good ethics and morals and follow this lifestyle of living how much do you think people will not try to bring you down for their own needs. Not all people are the same.

This is something every people tends to forget that “Life is not something to be fixed it will never be fixed but something you control and take agency over it.”

At least just constantly daydreaming about the idea of problem what you would do is at least understand the problem. I know this sound simple but really don’t try to understand their problem themselves and just going to therapist while not knowing yourself what would you tell and how they gonna fix this is the biggest loophole in traditional therapist sessions. The best example of this would be take a person and then put inside a room with just a chair to sit and nothing else no talking no entertaining and nothing and just see how much they’re able to sit with themselves this really shows us that how weak we are with yourself.

Nowadays survival in this world is hard that’s why people constantly lean heavily into self-improvement no problem in that but the way they present themselves with people who firsthand don’t know their themselves is the worst and how they themselves tell others how to make their life better. There is a bizarre and controversial take by Aristotle that “some human beings are slave by nature”. Now when I this try to actually understand this from other and different perspective by “slave” I don’t mean that you’re controlled by somebody but in most causes many people are you ordinary life if you agree or not control by other things easily even they don’t get to you directly or command you to do this it’s like Nudge theory where other people changes decisions and options in your life so that you would pick a option which is most better for themselves and not try to directly command you but indirectly always. Your school teacher say what you should learn, your boss tell you what to work on even their senior tell your boss what would you should give to your employees even in your head you constantly create a identify of yourself that constantly tell you what you should be doing and what not.

In this world no matter what you’re always represent yourself to the world in some great way and because of that way you create a different identity of yourself to the world and not only what in order for you to be great and better in your life you create a identity of that also so in order to continue living in better and great way you are tend or tired to something you have to follow to maintain that life you have but something in reality you want but something you have to cause maybe it’s great both in actual reality. But the mind of a person actually want to live and the reality you should live by in order to go through this life in this life is very different. And will never be same as always. Those who both live by mind of choices also struggle in the long term as well as the person who lived by the actual reality.

Maybe balancing works but it’s never truly satisfy both. Your mind wants one thing as a social animal and things you have to do in actual reality to live in this world.

We constantly take this perception in our mind that we need to fix things and this world constantly tell us to fix our life and that the problem with self-improvement we constantly being feed into this kind of idea that life needed to be fixed in some way in both mind and reality but actually you’re somewhat being slave to how you become overall as person and also things you impose on yourself to go though this world, and on the other hand we have the contradiction part like the snake analogy I told you before. As life and time changes we change as well so no one way of fixing life doesn’t going to work always. Your life problems is not something to be removed it’s something to be out grown.

For example: as a kid you have a fear of going into a dark room in your house you didn’t go there cause it’s scary but as you grownup as an adult you easily go into that same room and now tell me does that room suddenly become bright for you to come their as adult, absolutely No, you’ve grown as a person to know what their is something to fear over there.

Not only fixing life but any idea of anything we tend to get impose by it and tend to go through that way only cause we think it’s great but somewhat true but not always. All we would do is understand, control and know things and have strong agency towards it.

And also not only you is the reason you have the problems in your life the way you do. I don’t agree with this idea that people tell is that It’s your life and it’s your problem to fix, you’re the only reason of your life. That statement is totally vague and misses actually maybe points and maybe it has a deeper meaning but most people don’t go that way all they going to do is just say that one line and that’s it. It’s the same thing as saying Focus on what you control and reject the rest. People really just don’t understand what the stoic actually means in this idea that pure Stoic detachment is insufficient as a strategy for living but the Stoics weren’t actually recommending avoidance. The Stoic claim is more specific: that external events don’t determine your character, even when they do damage your life. Marcus Aurelius was not saying “ignore the things attacking you.” He was saying “your response to them is the only domain where virtue lives. The deeper meaning is that people misses.

Aristotle once said about this idea of humans are political animal but in the sense of humans do politics in actual sense but that we live in a community and we live by it we’re born and die in a community when even though you would live in solitude and say I don’t belong in a community you still uses things in your life made by community and live by the things which are made by the community.

Your own self your mind and reality heavily designed and worked by what other people say about you, how you behave, how you live by, the community thoughts, actions and almost everything directly influence the people living in that community even if they don’t know. And what others do to you or what you do to others heavily influence both you and your life decisions and choices. In that why maybe you did everything right in your life but people creating problems for you so saying it’s your problem doesn’t solve anything. The one and best way to look into this is that at least you as human can control yourself better than others so fixing yourself first is better but that’s the whole point and that’s where that line that it’s your life you’re the reason of your problems falls down is that even you fix your life other can still ruin it for yourself so just fixing you is not the way your community is also important other people are also important as much you is important. In normal human biology humans are described as “social animals” we’re constantly need others to live by.

For example: Even if you at your company work the hardest do all the things you’re told to, and still your coworkers and your boss treats you the worst it’s not something yours. Many humans problems arise from social tensions in family, school, work and life. If you’re bullied as a kid and you do everything in your power to fix that like taking with the administrator and still getting bullied it’s not something you have created it’s something come to you unintentionally and moreover that trauma of getting bullied will carry with your life for many times in your life some people forget but many still carry that burden of bullies cause it’s not something you would just forget but something you would out grow of and by deeply knowing it you can have control over it.

Even if you focus on what you can control and forget about other things is the same as the previous one let’s take the same bully example you would just avoid those places where the bullies are and maybe be in the safer place for you to be and then forgetting that what you can’t control which is the bullies what is the probability that the bullies will not come to you to bully you again. Maybe you decided you will not go outside of the classroom and say in there all time to not get caught by it what are the chances they will not come to you. So just focusing on you can control and not knowing what you can’t control is not a reliable way of living. Even you are doing everything great accordingly how it should be what are the chances that other will do it the same way to do it.

After all of these problems, pain and suffering you always will always be in problems and pain and so directly solution to solve or no guarantee it will even get fixed what you would do is just have deeply control, knowing of the problem and agency over that. Heavily control of both personal, social and professional life. Because problems will always be there and will have till your lifetime what you would actually have is how you take it and handle it over time not only what’s great for you but also with others cause both matters.

After all this if you say that what the way of outgrowing actually is, and some parts of the essay missing and unstructured is exactly what I was writing about, all these writing I have given you is a free hand writing in one sitting with no external notes and research I just sit in front of my computer for 2 hours and wrote it all in one go so that’s why and the thing which is the solution of outgrowing actually works it’s not clearly a one way of going on I told this in the essay itself that as you grow your life problems also grows so just having one way of outgrowing is not going to work for longer anyway it’s not something I should tell its something you should find within yourself I told this also in the essay that if I told you what to do then it’s the same things as other telling you how to fix your life and it’s not something for normal readers to read it’s for those who have gone through all these experiences, pain and suffering and problems and I know it’s unstructured.

I said this early in this essay that people really romanticize on pain and ideas of others and try to adopt it without it’s core and live in day dreaming of it to be feel by it but they don’t understand the actual cause of their problem, I would give you the answer right now but I couldn’t give you is the understand and the experience of that answer actually is and what’s it’s actually holds, this essays maybe took me 2 hour to write but it needs my 4 years of struggles and learnings, pain and experiences and heavily deeply introspection to write this for me to came to this conclusion to this essay how would I just transfer that to you for you to actually understand in only text. That’s the limit of language and words.

This essay isn’t the knowledge. The essay is the residue of the knowledge what’s left after 4 years gets compressed into an hour of writing. And the residue points at something real but can’t carry the weight of the actual experience that produced it. That’s the fundamental limit of language when it’s trying to transmit lived understanding rather than information.

This is what Polanyi called tacit knowledge “we know more than we can tell.” The knowing and the telling are different things. A surgeon can’t fully transfer what they know about the feel of tissue to a student through description. I can’t transfer what 4 years of that kind of struggle actually feels like through prose. The words are accurate but the referent is inaccessible to someone who hasn’t been in that territory.

Most pretends that self-help transfer is possible. It sells the map as if it’s the territory. I know that it can’t do that, even if it doesn’t always say so explicitly.

This isn’t a critique, more an observation. If you’re reading this and genuinely get it not because of getting it from the words either. You’re getting it because the words are triggering recognition of something you already half-know from your own experience. This essay works as a mirror, not a teacher as I wanted it to be. That’s a thing for writing to be. Just a different thing than most people expect writing to do.