Why do we experience suffering?

I quit smoking. My feat is two months old. And while this transition to the (perhaps) bright side is taking place, I noticed one thing. Man is such a creature – he always feels bad. I felt bad when I smoked. Thoughts about damage to health, self-injury on the theme of “get a grip, wimp,” pressure from loved ones. Then I quit (I got sick and realized that smoking wasn’t far off from IVF). And you know what? I still feel bad!

I still want to smoke. You can talk as much as you want about the importance of purpose, theories of conscious choice, and blahblahblah. The truth is the same for everyone – in any condition, no matter what happens to us, the feeling of suffering is our faithful companion. Apparently, this mechanism is built into us by nature for a reason. And if we look at our lives, we see that suffering/discomfort/anxiety and other discomfort pushes us forward.

No, I don’t mean that trouble makes us stronger. These are long unpopular tales from the early twentieth century. Adversity does something much more interesting-they make us ask “why?” Why do I feel bad? Why are the people around me bastards and creeps (especially the ones I can’t influence, but they directly affect my life)?

Why can’t things be the way I want them to be? Why, after all, can’t I just live and enjoy life!

Under the weight of these questions, some go into religion, some master the two-arrow theory, some abstract away, and some decide to clench their teeth and tread bravely against the wind to the grave. After all, we are all looking for a way to stop suffering through the most painful questions in our lives–the “why” and the “why.”

You may not agree with me, but there is only one word I have chosen for this winter: exhaustion. The Japanese had a method of torture – tying a person and dripping a drop of water on his or her head with a certain frequency. It would seem to be just a drop of water, but the weakest were giving up in just a couple of hours.

The amount of pressuring and unpleasant events that methodically and little by little drip down on each of us cannot help but be exhausting. And when we get the next news, we think about how little we suffered yesterday….

But is that what we were created for? Has such a wise, harmonious nature designed us only to experience suffering at every moment of our lives?

But… wait a minute.

Why do we experience suffering? Who are the hands that make us miserable? No matter how you look at it, these hands belong to the man. Your boss, your parents, your friends, your politicians, your children, and the driver who cuts you off at the corner.

Fate has no other hands but ours. We are the ones who ruin each other’s lives. But also those who can make her happy. Just as a newborn baby’s entire future life is shaped by how his family treats him, our entire life is shaped by how those around us treat me.

If we felt at least a little bit of this mutual dependence and wanted to make each other’s lives easier, our fates would not be so tragic. And maybe then I wouldn’t be thinking about how unbearable it is for me personally to abstain from smoking, but about how my example makes it easier for others to go through the process of quitting.