Why am I suffering?
Whose fault is it?
I’ve noticed a pattern in my life, and it’s kinda funny.
Whenever I’m making progress towards my goals, dreams, or activities I set out to accomplish, I usually feel successful. I have these feelings and pictures of being a hero. I did everything well to make this happen, I think. When I see people I consider unsuccessful, I think they deserve that because they must have done something wrong to end up that way.
But then…
There are times (and there are many of these times) when I’m not making progress. I feel like a victim. I have feelings and pictures of being a persecuted hero. I look elsewhere. Maybe something is wrong with my genetics. Maybe the system is rigged. Maybe I’m playing the wrong game. Maybe the game can’t be won fairly. Maybe this isn’t where my purpose or passion truly lies. Maybe this, maybe that… Then, when I see people I consider unsuccessful, I assume we’re all part of the matrix, suffering from the collective evils and corruptions inflicted by those in charge of the world.
The Father, one of the characters, in Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, clearly puts it:
For man never reasons so much, or becomes so introspective, as when he suffers: since he is anxious to get at the cause of his sufferings, to learn who has produced them, and whether it is just—or unjust—that he should have to bear them.
On the other hand, when a man is happy, he takes his happiness as it comes and doesn’t analyse it—just as if happiness were his right.
Animals suffer without reasoning about their suffering. But take the case of a man who suffers and begins to reason about it… and think, “Oh no—it can’t be allowed.” Let him suffer as an animal does, and then—“Ah yes, now he is human.”…
But I’m not philosophising. I’m crying aloud the reason of my sufferings.
Every day I wake up (and I hope I continue to for the next 2.398e+9 seconds), I come across a self-made millionaire. I come across one when I read, watch, listen to people’s stories, doom-scroll, or just daydream about my future. But hold on: Where can I find the self-made paupers, or don’t they exist?