If

If there was just slightly less evil, 

If there was just a little more kindness,

If we could just get rid of the suffering, 

maybe the world wouldn’t be better. 

What does “better” even really mean? 

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 within the scope of our capabilities, perhaps, in the end, it makes no difference to us. Perhaps the pathway towards change, or the very pathway towards a meaningful and purposeful life is by this paradoxically futile yet valiant endeavor to achieve the unachievable, to win the unwinnable, to make possible the impossible.

Why—why fight a battle is both unending and without victory? 

Because—what else is there to do?