Just gonna post my therapy assignment here. I was given a question… and then I answered it. The existential crisis that I refer to started on day 294.

Question

How do I balance being a highly sensitive person with suffering?

Answers

Answer written during an existential crisis

Near the beginning of the crisis

Consider that to suffer because of the suffering of others would be adding to the collective suffering.

Near a low point of the crisis

On the other hand, one can succumb to the suffering. To be told that suffering is just part of life and there’s nothing you can do to get rid of it. To see it perpetuated by nature itself via cancer and other diseases, via natural disasters, via animals and other organisms eating each other alive. And what are you supposed to do when people want to perpetuate suffering, including their own? So just give up, throw in the towel, give in to it. Feel the suffering when it’s here to stay, when striving against suffering can itself cause suffering.

Merely not trying to actively harm rather than trying to help. Not trying to cause suffering but also not fighting against it. An apathetic acceptance. And one can want to not care, because caring could entail doing things which requires effort—struggling to make an effort—which I feel I’d rather not do. I can want it all to come to an end rather than wanting life to go on and on and having to perpetually do things to attempt to keep the suffering at bay, all the while suffering along the way.

Answer written a day after the existential crisis

On the other, other hand, one can dream of a better reality, one with no suffering, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) dreamed of a better future. While life, and suffering as a result, continues to be a thing because organisms won’t stop reproducing, we can try to make it so that it’s less uncomfortable to be here for all of us. Although there may still be hatred of others (based on race among other things) and prejudices and biases, MLK’s efforts weren’t in vain. Segregation is no longer a thing here and diverse people are allowed equal opportunities. While certain laws and repeals seem to be undoing progress, they can’t undo that it’s already been done and now we know that it’s possible.

Regarding effort feeling like struggle, it can help to gravitate to actions which don’t feel like a tedious struggle, something that one is naturally drawn to or finds oneself in the situation of doing, to contribute to the alleviation, and perhaps even elimination, of suffering. MLK dreamed of a future in which his children wouldn’t be judged by the color of their skin. I dream of a future in which there is no suffering (and I don’t care how much you say it’s not possible).

Why not work toward the elimination of suffering, no matter how much of a pipe dream we can think that it might be, when, after all, we collectively have lifetimes to do so? Maybe we’ll prove ourselves wrong. Maybe we’ll see that it’s possible. And in the end, what do we have to lose?

Directly answering the question

It helps to straddle the line that’s between giving a fuck and not giving a fuck.

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To be considered…

Just because life as we know it started from something brutal and paved/traverses the road of suffering doesn’t mean life always has to be this way.

One can consider that we’re so conditioned to the existence of suffering that we can’t imagine life/existence any other way (much like our current economic system). One can further consider that life/existence could be something different, could become something so much better in a way that is currently unfathomable to us. It can be argued that such won’t be achieved in this lifetime due to existential threats, but even if current life goes extinct, there’s no guarantee that life won’t come back. And there’s likely so much about life/existence that we still don’t know or understand.

Sure, life as we currently know it consists of suffering, but the key phrase is “as we currently know it.”