The nature of suffering for humans begins, perhaps most obviously, with physical pain. Hunger, thirst, sickness, injury—these are primal triggers of distress. But as children, helpless in a chaotic or neglectful environment, we suffer deeply on a psychological level. We lack the power, the wisdom, the context to change anything. Our character is still forming, and the world imprints itself upon us before we even understand what’s happening.
Children internalize external conflict. If a parent is angry, absent, abusive, or cold, the child assumes it’s because they did something wrong. We simply don’t know better. As children, we don’t understand generational trauma. We don’t know that our caregivers are the product of their own unresolved suffering.
And so, we suffer—often in silence. Emotions like loneliness, fear, boredom, jealousy, shame, and confusion arrive without warning, and we have no framework to manage them. We can't redirect our thoughts. We can’t rationalize our feelings. We feel them, fully and painfully.
There are roughly seven million waking minutes in the first 20 years of life. That’s seven million opportunities to experience discomfort, fear, or unmet needs. This is the foundation of our suffering: not just the emotional states themselves, but what they do to our nervous systems. They activate our stress response. They trigger anxiety.
Here’s how it works: we have an experience, and we immediately think and feel something about it. If the feeling is negative and intense, our nervous system fires off a chain reaction—contracted muscles, fight-or-flight hormones, shortness of breath. Sometimes there’s a subtle sensation of suffocation. Emotions flood the body. Blood rushes to the face. Self-esteem—the fragile image of who we believe ourselves to be—can collapse in an instant.
Now, combine this with the evolutionary pressures hardwired into our DNA. Since the dawn of life, survival was the only game. Outrun predators. Catch prey. Build shelter. Find clean water. Secure rest. That was the loop. Today, we no longer fear wild animals or starvation, but we’ve inherited the same biology.
Here’s the twist: the modern human suffers not from too much nature, but from not enough. We’ve lost connection to the land, the sky, the rhythm of day and night. We don’t hear the birds or the crickets. We don’t walk barefoot on the earth. We’re domesticated creatures now, cut off from the heartbeat of the planet. Our anxiety has become ambient—low-grade, persistent, and unnatural.
This isn’t just poetic. It’s a crisis of biology. Our modern environment is overstimulating, disconnected, and in many ways toxic to the nervous system. We’ve developed exaggerated coping mechanisms for exaggerated anxieties. As a collective, we’re drowning in stress.
That said, I don’t believe we’re worse off than our ancestors. Humanity evolves. It adapts. Nature doesn’t preserve weakness for long. But we must not be complacent—because anxiety, like a virus, spreads. It infects families, communities, nations. Our mission, then, is not just to calm ourselves, but to help those around us calm too. That is how we fulfill our purpose.
We were designed—whether by evolution, divinity, or both—to be caretakers. Of each other. Of the planet. Of life itself. Our highest goal isn’t pleasure or success or even happiness. It’s to protect and preserve consciousness. To observe life. To learn the nature of self.
Maybe you believe life is an illusion. That time and space don’t exist. Maybe you’re right. But that doesn’t change the reality that you’re here. You’re in a body. You’re breathing. You’re thinking. You’re experiencing.
That’s what matters.
What matters is that we reduce harm. That we don’t injure ourselves or others. And when we feel boredom or loneliness, we ask: how can I turn this around? How can I give something to someone else—my child, my partner, my friend, a stranger?
Maybe these words will reach someone in the future who needs them. I remember being in my 20s, reading spiritual books that meant the world to me. They kept me going. I spent years trying to decode the cosmos—then one day, I laughed. “You’ll never figure this out,” I told myself. “This mystery has layers. But you know what you can figure out? Yourself.”
You can study your character. You can waste fewer calories on nonsense. You can help others help themselves. Not out of martyrdom. Out of mission. My issue isn’t a messiah complex—it’s that living only for myself is dull. So I listen to my boredom. I listen to my loneliness.
If I had a thousand years, I’d become a comedian to make people laugh. I’d write music to make them cry. I’d dance in a way that made people gasp. I’d write poetry, puppet shows, books—thousands of them. I’d leave behind tools for the next generation so they wouldn’t have to trip over the same obstacles.
Yes, I have attachments. Yes, I have ego. And that’s fine. I’m here to live. I love it here. One day I won’t be. Until then, I’m writing.
My ego? It’s a photo album—a mosaic of memories, dreams, ideas, even the mosquitoes I’ve swatted. It’s not a villain. It’s my archive. My story.
I don’t know what happens after death. I never will. And I don’t need to. Because I know what happens in life. I know that the dead don’t ponder death. Only the living do. And as long as I’m breathing, I’m thinking about how to live.
I’m not experiencing death when someone dies. I’m experiencing life while witnessing death. That’s the difference. That’s the truth.
And that truth is enough to keep me going.