As humans, suffering and failure is inevitable, and the yearning for meaning and purpose is inexorable. The human condition is defined by this very notion that they two can never be separated.
Suffering
Posted on Friday, December 30, 2022
Last updated on Saturday, August 15, 2026 at 4:27 PM
I typically don’t care when people deny the existence of God; I question it myself even. Though there's this particular argument that irks me; atheists and Christians often wrestle over the concept of why there’s so much suffering in the world, despite the supposed existence of an altruistic higher being.
The atheist is naive for thinking that the existence of suffering disproves the existence of God, because it takes even more faith to believe that the premise of an omniscient and omnipotent God created suffering by accident and is powerless to do anything about it.
The Christian is naive for thinking that God's intention is to deliver us all from a life of suffering, because they believe that the point of the journey is to arrive—that we endure suffering solely so we can be deemed worthy of the eternal reward of heaven.
Both believe fundamentally that suffering is "bad," and there's nothing wrong with this belief; in fact, it shows that you're not a psychopath. But the mistake that both the atheist and the Christian make is coming to the conclusion that because it is "bad", it's something that shouldn't exist.
I want to posit this idea that in the grand scope of the human condition, perhaps suffering is the point. This is not to say that we should be sadists and constantly make a conscious effort to embrace the suffering as it happens, or that we should entertain this absurd notion of introducing more suffering in our world to bring about more meaning. From a metaphysical standpoint, suffering is not "good" or "bad"; it simply just is. It is a fundamental dynamic in our world that is inextricable from the human condition and our desire to be better than we were yesterday.
So that leads us to another question: As humanity, have we gotten better? Namely, at reducing the amount of total evil—the amount unjust suffering inflicted on other humans—as time progresses? Are we able to fairly measure the amount of suffering in the first place? Can we reliably quantify how much good or evil is present in our world currently? There remains this harrowing notion that as human civilization advances, as we become more and more capable of saving and improving human lives, we become equally as capable of causing terror, unjust suffering, and death.
On one hand, advances in agriculture, pasteurization, public safety and health, medical technologies like vaccines, antibiotics, surgery, and blood transfusions all have contributed towards theoretically saving billions of lives. We've been able to spread knowledge, art, culture, and awareness of pressing issues at an unprecedented rate through the internet. We’ve greatly expanded the scope of philanthropy, introduced clean water to innumerable communities, opened countless numbers of schools, hospitals, and other invaluable institutions across the world. The standard of living and income across all strata of social class and all parts of the world has increased drastically.
On the other hand, we've killed hundreds of millions of people just within the last century. We've invented weapons of mass destruction that can wipe everyone off the face of the earth within minutes. We're causing irreparable damage to the Earth through pollution, habitat destruction, loss of biodiversity, and climate change. Hundreds of thousands of people are murdered every year just from homicide. Millions more die due to hunger, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, respiratory diseases, and automobile accidents, all precipitated by the outright negligence of the effects of smoking, air and water contamination, obesity, alcohol abuse, and poorly managed car-centric societies. Hundreds of millions of people are subjected to soul-crushing, mind-numbing work, poverty-level wages, and an abhorrent work-life balance because corporations choose to value short-term gain and profits over the welfare of its employees. Mental illness, depression, drug abuse, and suicide rates have reached unprecedented highs across the globe.
The big question is: will there be a breakthrough point where we somehow surmount the final barrier of our human tendency to gravitate towards evil, and have a world where we perpetually gravitate towards less and less unjust suffering? If you solely looked for trends in the past ten thousand years of history, the answer is very clear—no. Over and over again we have proved that we never learn from the mistakes of our past; in fact, it seems to only get worse over time. Through the events of the past century, we make the perpetrators of atrocities of the distant past look like rank amateurs compared to what we’ve done in recent memory. Do we have any reason to believe that humanity will have a sudden change of heart in the future?
With some of the darkest chapters of human history—colonialism, the Holocaust, the two world wars—most of us feel a burning sense of indignation. Even passive events with no apparent cause or reason—someone’s child that suffers an incurable disease, or earthquakes and floods that have taken the lives of millions—drive us to want justice and redemption. Cause and reason aside, perpetrator or no perpetrator regardless, whatever tragedy befalls us fuels something within the human spirit nonetheless.
Perhaps we're trying to answer a futile question. Perhaps there is no breakthrough point, and the pathway towards the center of everything we do and everything we are is lined with suffering. The human condition is fundamentally a balancing act between good and evil. It’s ultimately the medium through which we can even begin to understand the metaphysical, the elusive concepts of meaning and purpose, and the idea that we can have something worth living for.
"It's possible that without the possibility of evil, there cannot be good. Good requires the possibility of evil, and maybe good is so good that the fact that it requires the possibility of evil is acceptable—maybe it's even desirable."
— Jordan Peterson
Given the choice to live in the matrix and indulge in hedonism, it seems that many of us still choose to live with the suffering of reality. And for us, the reason is very clear. Can we even comprehend or make sense of a life without suffering? As humans, we have an innate propensity to create and write stories, to make something of our life, however imperfect and chaotic. Without suffering, our stories cease to be stories. There are no protagonists without antagonists, no heroes without villains, no plot without tension, no resolution without conflict, no good without evil. And without stories to write, we have no reason left to live.
Posted on Friday, December 30, 2022
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Posted on Friday, December 30, 2022
Lessons Learned
Posted on Wednesday, May 24, 2023
Last updated on Saturday, August 15, 2026 at 4:27 PM
When there were hundreds of millions of people who lost everything in all the horrific wars of the last century, why do we in the present day lay complacent? Why do we continue to perpetuate hate, intolerance, and violence in our world when they are the indisputable root cause of such catastrophes and atrocities? Why do we persist in this ambivalence about the nature of right and wrong, when, for those that have actually endured such tragedies, there is not an inkling of doubt?
Humanity’s collective internalization of lessons learned is akin to a glacier—a gigantic heterogeneous mass of ice, snow, water, rock, and sediment—inching along month after month, week by week, and day by day, moving so slowly that its progress is virtually imperceptible. On the other hand, if we were to visualize the lessons learned of individuals, it might resemble an avalanche—a torrent of snow tumbling down a mountainside at staggering volume and dizzying speeds. Neil Peart, in the song Mission, wrote:
In the grip
Of a nameless possession
A slave to the drive of obsession
A spirit with a vision
Is a dream with a mission
For a singular consciousness, doubt seldom holds back the most determined of individuals; they become entranced by the very profundity and imperativeness of the task that lay ahead of them. No matter what obstacles may come their way and no matter what radical changes they must make, they will inevitably find their way, whereas a collective consciousness—any form of group, tribe, or society—is bogged down by such obstacles. By nature’s design, every human will be different—different circumstances, and thus different formation of characterological traits and idiosyncrasies that determine the design of each individual’s decision-making faculties, and thus the conception of right and wrong, of what is significant and insignificant, of what is worth changing and what isn’t worth changing. And considering what we understand about human psychology, there is far more likely to be a paucity of humility than there would be pride and intractability in the average individual. For the vast majority of human history, the individual has seldom had the means to overturn the status quo, only able to inch it along.
However, it’s not as though many of those lessons are simply lost generation after generation. It may be that the vast majority of lessons are indeed simply lost in time, but what few remain are those resilient enough to impart some miniscule degree of knowledge or imbue some form of wisdom into our collective consciousness. From a certain perspective, we’ve made immense progress—the gaining cultural traction of the repudiation of racism, sexism, and arbitrary forms of discrimination in society, the rejection of unnecessary violence, or the growing awareness of environmental and sustainability of our existence on this planet. Despite this, we must ask: Are we no longer waging wars and murdering one another on a daily basis? Are there no more victims of corporate or governmental corruption, greed, and negligence? Are we still not on the brink of world war or nuclear war at any given moment?
Within the context of modern society, the aforementioned power play between the individual and the group has been inverted in some sense; the individual—now with equipped with tools capable of mass destruction whether in the form of a firearm, the bomb, or the computer—has the means of inflicting irreversible damage upon humanity, potentially even reversing all the progress made after millennia. It begs the question—have we actually progressed? And if we have, what difference does that progress make when we’re now far more capable of wreaking havoc and undertaking more forms of malevolence than we ever have?
It is also another conundrum entirely—and a conundrum certainly worth bringing up—if we question the value of collective progress; we already seldom ask ourselves what specifically needs progressing, let alone whether or not we need to progress in the first place. After all, to nature, it makes no difference; what are an avalanche and a glacier but water molecules shifting around from place to place? Everything that happens on Earth is an unceasing, inexorable, and self-sustaining cycle of cause and effect, and all is one and the same. Perhaps everything is already in balance. In the same way nature needs predators as it does prey, death as it does life, famine and drought as it does abundance and prosperity, storms and gusts of wind as it does sunlight and gentle breezes, it could be that we need antagonists just as much as we need protagonists, chaos just as much as we need peace, anger just as much as we need kindness, urgency just as much as we need patience, laziness just as much as we need industriousness, deceit just as much as we need truth, evil just as much as we need good, and suffering just as much as we need joy.
Perhaps the question is not whether we can win this battle against suffering—not whether or not we should suffer—but it is rather a question of how and why we suffer at all. The question merely becomes what battles we choose to fight and what sides we choose to take. Yes—the specific act of exhorting the people around us to be just slightly less evil and a little more kind may indeed be what is necessary to maintain this balance, but there is a world of difference between demanding that others be a certain way versus demanding that the universe be a certain way. The former is diligence, and the latter is insanity.
But it may be that in the end, it makes no difference to us. Perhaps the pathway towards change and towards a meaningful and purposeful life, whether at the individual or group level, is in this ceaseless battle to eradicate evil, hate, and any form of malevolence; it is this paradoxically futile, yet valiant, endeavor to achieve the unachievable, to win the unwinnable, to make possible the impossible.
If we go back to this paradoxical notion of suffering, perhaps that is the point of it all—to suffer, even if not collectively advancing humanity as a whole, even if we repeat the mistakes of the past, for it is all that gives us meaning in the end.
Why—why fight a battle is both unending and without victory?
Because—what else is there to do?
Posted on Wednesday, May 24, 2023
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Posted on Wednesday, May 24, 2023
Resolution
Posted on Monday, January 2, 2023
Last updated on Saturday, August 15, 2026 at 4:27 PM
The concept of the New Year is fundamentally a placebo. It's the idea of a new beginning, a fresh start that appeals to so many people, even though there's nothing inherently new or fresh about it. We're 99% the same people as we were on December 31st. For those that actually make something out of their new year resolution, I'm happy that the placebo worked for you to achieve something and better yourself; we need to learn to better embrace healthy placebos in our lives anyhow.
We all know, however, that the vast majority do not keep their resolutions, and this is simply because making a resolution based on an arbitrary frame of time won't persist because it has no relation to who we are, what we believe, what we fear, and what we hope for. It's very hard to be resolute just because it's 2023.
So what does it mean to be resolute?
when we venture to see what lurks within our shadow selves,
when we find the courage to confront what lies in the abyss,
when we've seen the perils of an uninformed and hedonistic lifestyle,
when we've been afflicted of such great suffering,
when we edge ever closer towards finding truth,
when we've been knocked to rock bottom and that the only option left
is to be determined and resolute on your way back up.
You become resolute when you've discovered your reason to live. It means that you've already made the decision to commit yourself to a cause, that you've already answered the hard questions in life—who you're going to be, why you're going to do something, and how you're going to do it. It turns out, the same word that is an antithesis to our all-too-common existential crises is the same word we use to make absurd, arbitrary, shallow goals that almost none of us commit to.
Consider two scenarios:
You already had an actual resolution prior to 2023. Why, now, that the mere year has changed, have we decided to recalibrate its path or change it entirely? Just stuck with it.
You had no actual resolutions prior to 2023. You ought to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, why is it time now, to finally start thinking about how I should progress as an individual and potentially answer the hard questions of life? What is it about me that caused me to postpone such vital help to myself when I most needed it? Answering those questions will reveal far more about yourself than any “new year’s resolution” you set for yourself, successful or not.
We underestimate this notion of a resolution. If there was no severe mental or emotional turmoil involved in those goals that you set, by definition those were not resolutions. Every time we make a new year's resolution, we do a disservice to the actual meaning of resolute; we downplay the amount and severity of toil and strife it took for every resolute person to become who they are. There's simply nothing resolute about it, and we should all stop pretending it is. The very concept that a resolution can be based on an arbitrary frame of time and nothing else belies the actual spirit of being resolute.
If we are so compelled to spur ourselves into action every 365 days, I will cast my first vote to instead only call it new year's goals. But if the idea of a new year, a new beginning was indeed an impetus to be resolute, to answer the hard questions in your life, let’s not put shame to it by calling it new year’s resolutions; the new year doesn’t deserve the credit for your struggle. You do.
Posted on Monday, January 2, 2023
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Posted on Monday, January 2, 2023
Naïveté
Posted on Wednesday, January 4, 2023
Last updated on Saturday, August 15, 2026 at 4:27 PM
During my junior year in high school, I became mired in a quest to figure out what my life purpose was and how to live out a genuine Christian life. I was disillusioned by the superficiality of church. I was disappointed in the failure of my friends, family, and peers to understand me. I was yearning for a truly unconditional love and an unwavering companionship that was so idealized in the Bible. I was longing to know my purpose here on Earth. I was desperate for truth.
I was convinced that I had to find an answer. I had to arrive at a conclusion. And if I couldn’t? Then my life, bereft of meaning and purpose, was no longer worth living.
A few emotionally traumatic experiences and several bouts of depression later, I had stumbled across the Book of Ecclesiastes, and the work of Albert Camus:
7 The light is pleasant, and it is good for the eyes to see the sun. 8 Indeed, if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all; but let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. Everything that is to come will be futility. 9 Rejoice, young man, during your childhood, and let your heart be pleasant during the days of young manhood. And follow the impulses of your heart and the desires of your eyes. Yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things. 10 So, remove grief and anger from your heart and put away pain from your body, because childhood and the prime of life are fleeting.
— Ecclesiastes 11:9-10
"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life."
— Albert Camus
At that moment, I thought that I had found truth. I thought that I had arrived at the final destination of understanding life as it was—realizing that what I needed was to just be able to live in the moment, to spread kindness in our world, to see the genuine happiness and joy I could bring to people no matter how insignificant my contribution seemed.
The reality was that I don't think I learned how to let go of my grief and anger, I don't think I figured out what happiness truly consisted of, and I don't think I figured out how to live a life worth living. Looking back, what I saw then was a vague glimpse of the outlines of a greater truth, a glance at a tattered map toward an elusive treasure, a loose grasp on a semblance of revelation in the midst of doubt, a warm sunlight that phases in and out of a room by the shroud of passing clouds. I stumbled across the exact wisdom that I needed to hear, but I just didn’t get it. It made sense to me, but I was still fundamentally the same person. Grief, anger, regret, doubt, and self-hatred still lingered in my soul. Realizing this and having endured enough of the emotional turmoil of the past, I had given up on answering those questions altogether, and I would continue my life into college continuing to make the same mistakes and living with the same discontentment that plagued me in my adolescence.
The age when we begin to entertain the existential crises in our lives—when cynical and misanthropic thoughts begin to permeate our consciousness, when our souls beckon, no, beg us to dig deeper, to find meaning, to find purpose—is the same age where we least understand these confounding aspects of our lives. At that age, we understand so little about the world, about our own perception of life, let alone that of others. We lack the wisdom that comes with years, if not decades, of experience to inform us about ourselves and our life decisions. We're barely past the stage of being merely oblivious children; we've dabbled our feet into the darkness and the void, but we cannot even begin to bear the piercing light that shines through the cracks—a bravado to comprehend an incomprehensible truth.
But I will argue that neither the Bible or Camus are telling us to give up on the quest to find meaning in our lives and what ultimately fulfills us as human beings. I don’t believe that they are arguing that everyone just give up pondering the secrets to their happiness and life purpose by preemptively acknowledging their ignorance and naivete; in fact, I would say that it is all the more reason to do the opposite—to think about these hard questions as you go and to commit yourself to a lifelong quest to understand.
My mistake was thinking that I found truth, that I arrived at a revelation on how to live my life. What I didn’t understand is that we will never know enough. It is impossible to know the perfect moment for you to begin your search. The key is not to embrace our ignorance; the key is to embrace the unknown. It is not about giving up on yourself in this dip when the unknown hits you harder mentally and emotionally than anything you've ever experienced in your life. It's about accustoming yourself to simultaneously say "I don't know" and "I want to understand," so that you can avoid burning yourself out through desperation. You can still enjoy your youth, but lest we forget that the point of a journey is not to arrive; let your experiences—the days filled with light and the days filled with darkness alike—shape your perception, your worldview, and who you are.
Perhaps we're all wrong about the Christian life—maybe we're missing the entire point when we wait for blessings to come, when we obsess over heaven or hell, when we flaunt our accomplishments in the church or how much theological knowledge we've attained, when we stand around waiting for Jesus' return, when we constantly fixate on each and every possible reward or punishment, when we think that we have to fully conquer our doubts and arrive at a firm conclusion about our faith. Those things neither constitute the point of the journey. It could be that the practice, as Seth Godin argues, is the driving force behind the change we all desperately want to bring to the world. It is the kind of consistent generosity and compassion despite our doubts, the kind of attention and care and genuine desire to understand more, a daily contribution to those around us and thus humanity as a whole, and a patience to know that there are few absolutes in life when it comes to the innumerable paths that each of us have to walk. There is something about the practice of letting yourself be proven wrong, to be in denial, and to think that your life is banal and inconsequential. This practice teaches you something about the human condition and the weight and burden that bears on all of us.
It took me eight years to understand this. It was only in 2022 when I could finally look myself in the mirror, when I could finally dig into the abysmal depths of my being and say that, without regret, I am proud to be the person I am today. If you asked me if I could magically have those years back—those eight years I supposedly squandered on futile self-reflection, self-doubt, all those tears I've shed, all the relationships I’ve torn apart, and all the emotional trauma I've endured—I wouldn't understand what you mean. Because all that pain and strife and turmoil taught me to understand what it truly means to be empathetic and to be a sensitive, compassionate human being. It taught me not only about the darkness that lurks beneath all of our souls, but also the light that lies ever further within those depths.
Posted on Wednesday, January 4, 2023
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- Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.Søren Kierkegaard
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- For in much wisdom is much grief, And he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.Ecclesiastes 1:18
Posted on Wednesday, January 4, 2023
Choice
Posted on Wednesday, May 3, 2023
Last updated on Saturday, August 15, 2026 at 4:27 PM
One of the fundamental paradoxes of our lives is the one of choice.
In the contemplation of our decisions—our rudimentary, superficial calculus of cause and effect, our biased judgments of what constitutes a good or bad outcome, and our overweening faith in a stable, predictable world—we often forget that, as humans, we have an absolutely horrendous track record at predicting the future, and an even worse record of making decisions that ultimately contribute to a happier or more fulfilling life.
This is because we forget to factor in our bias for “good” outcomes when we partake in that calculus; by operating by our instinctive preconceptions of “good,” we predispose ourselves towards the path of least resistance, the options that seem to be laden with less suffering and strife. We would much rather prefer it if we didn’t fail; if we didn’t get fired from or rejected for a job; if we passed an exam or evaluation with flying colors; if we didn’t have to end a relationship or friendship even if it is holding us back.
The paradox is that while we implicitly understand that suffering and strife is the only means by which we can grow as individuals and derive any meaning whatsoever from life, all our decision-making calculus is coded to obviate it. We think we know what’s best for us, but the stark reality is that we couldn’t be more wrong. Every single success story that we celebrate consists of failure, of people that made ostensibly terrible mistakes—failed classes, job rejections, ruined relationships, or missed opportunities. But by overcoming these challenges that came their way, they were able to divert space for growth in other areas in their life that ultimately contributed towards their success.
So why is it, then, that we have such an aversion towards making purportedly risky choices? Do we really understand the long-term consequences of persisting on the beaten path, let alone the less-traveled one? And, above all, do we understand how those consequences will ultimately contribute towards a life worth living?
If we value personal growth, if we wish to live a life with meaning, purpose, and success, then, paradoxically, we must learn to make decisions that will likely lead us to failure, in one form or another.
“If failure is not an option, then neither is success.”
— Seth Godin
Posted on Wednesday, May 3, 2023
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Posted on Wednesday, May 3, 2023
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