How To Suffer Less

Life takes effort. Sometimes it seems that every bit of forward movement in life is like pushing your bike up a steep mountainside. And just when you think it can’t get any more difficult, the trail turns so steep, so narrow, so treacherous, that you’re forced to throw your bike across your shoulders, adding an extra 30 pounds of awkward metal tubing and mud-covered rubber onto your shoulders.

In that moment, it can feel like the weight of the world has been made manifest and laid across your scrawny human back.

Whenever I reach this point in life, both literally and metaphorically, I have to ask myself how I move forward from here. Is the weight of the world really on my shoulders? How do I deal with what is at least a constant feeling of pressure?

Seneca has some wisdom to impart on this topic:

“. . .memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the present.”

More here.

Photo: Marcel Slootheer