From a child’s perspective, it’s easy to think that their life is completely ruined because they failed a spelling quiz. This doesn’t happen to every child, but children are very impressionable and when the parents start influencing the mind around what success or failure means, what a A+ and a F means, what being good and bad means the child has no option but to accept that until they develop more critical thinking abilities.
I somewhat remember feeling like that often times growing up but nowadays I don’t even remember what my elementary school experience was like most of the times. I have vague glimpses of things that happened but what really happened? Who was there? What was the question I got wrong? What grade was I in? I don’t even remember because there is no reason the memory needs to stand out in my mind.
It’s not because I’m a grown up now. Failing spelling tests are unmemorable even before the school year ends. But until the time passes and we know better, we still have all the reasons to believe our life is ruined.
Some tests, like the SAT’s, are more important than spelling tests. Many of my peer students had lots of remorse around scoring what they scored in the SAT’s at the time and I’m willing to bet they haven’t even thought about SAT’s in the past ten years.
It is unlikely that you will get something on your first try all the time. This means your job interviews might not have been successful at the time. That also feels like a catastrophic failure, but in the long run it’s just a point in time.
The same goes for breakups, divorces, death of a family member, bankruptcy, and whatever else you can think of. Some of these feel more sticky than others, and it feels like they should be treated with more gravity. I won’t disagree with that, a small scrape on the knee is very different from a fractured femur.
But while the treatment of the scrape and the fracture are different, they are the same in that they are both medical treatments for a specific condition. But is it that fractures are inherently more severe than scrapes? A scrape to an immunocompromised person can mean a barrage of infections at the wound site. A fracture to a professional athlete can be something that happens quite frequently in their sport. So while there is some level of a widely accepted idea of severity, it individually depends on the context.
Some people will never get over the death of their loved one. But regardless of whether they move on or not, time goes by and life goes by. There’s nothing wrong with not moving on, there’s nothing wrong with staying in grief. It is not a requirement by any means to move on from someone.
In fact, it is not a requirement to not suffer. You can choose to suffer. I’ve written about that before here. Read full story
I can suffer because I have a choice. Since I also don’t have to suffer, I can choose to not suffer too. If something in my house gets broken and I don’t invest in high quality parts for the repair, I don’t hire a handyman but do my own work watching YouTube and such, then in the short term i get the benefit of cost savings. But after about five years, something breaks even harder than last time and I have to accept that it is the price I pay for not doing my due diligence in the past.
Insurance! When I pay every month to something I rarely use, it feels like a scam. Until I have to use it. Then I’m thankful I did it. Just like this, every choice just comes with a different set of side effects. In general short term benefits come with long term costs and short term costs come with long term benefits.
But unfortunately we don’t spend a lot of time consciously making decisions around whether we are going to suffer or not. My work is about giving you back that choice. Why is this relevant in today’s topic of timeliness? Well, in the really grand scheme does our individual suffering matter?
If you knew at age 7 that the spelling quiz, while important at the time, isn’t going to be something that destines your life to failure, would you spend time crying about it? If you knew at age 17 that the college of your choice, while important at the time, isn’t going to determine the outcome of your life, would you spend time in remorse because you didn’t get in?
If you knew at age 28 that this breakup, while important at the time, isn’t going to prevent love from your life, would you spend time beating yourself up and intoxicating yourself to distract yourself from the pain? If you knew at age 38 that going bankrupt, while important at the time, doesn’t stop you from being financially successful again, would you spend time feeling bad for all the choices you made?
If you knew on your deathbed you’d really give everything to just get a little more time on your life back, would you live life like you’re living right now?
If you knew that the year 2025 is actually around 300,000 years since the beginning of homo sapiens and every single person’s life since that point culminated to this point in time, and you haven’t spent a single second thinking about all the people who have lived and died in this planet — would you continue to let your life problems weigh you down?
The best highlights of all the people’s lives are forgotten, never to be remembered anymore. The worst lowlights of all the people’s lives are forgotten, never to be remembered anymore. This isn’t some nihilistic, depressing shit; it’s reality. The same applies for flowers, trees, animals, waves, mountains, rocks, sand, fire, rain, waterfalls, and so on. Existence is a continuous experience of ongoing changes.
If you truly understood this, would you spend this much time feeling heavy about your life?