Suffer, to merely suffer

For the privileged among us, the problem is rarely that the suffering itself is excessive; it is that we disproportionately choose suffering over joy, and that we suffer to merely suffer.

Suffering is rarely bad in and of itself; it is a necessary component of life. But far too much of that suffering is devoted towards obsessing over our status, legacy, and material possessions, towards bathing our consciousness in anxiety and imaginary misery, towards implicating one another in ugliness in the form of petty arguments, feuds, and absurd conflicts, and towards occupying our minds not with the guiding light of morality and reason, but excessively with nebulous and capricious emotions.

Everything must be in balance in this life, in this society, in this world, in this universe.

And to live our lives that way, is to live a life out of balance.