The whole concept of not knowing what you’ve got until it’s gone. Remember that song you used to hate hearing and now 20 some years later, you’d wish we’d be back to music like it because music today is too artificial and AI-powered? Remember nearly a lot of things you criticized and now have a soft spot for because everything now has gone to shit?
Yeah, that hits hard. What sucks is that sometimes, you don’t know for certain if you’re experiencing the best of things. But once it passes you, give it 1 - 5 years, you’ll know it.
Life is inherently just suffering. Everything you do to prevent suffering simply prolongs it. Coupled with the fact that most forms of life need to consume other forms of life just to survive.
Even in the most beautiful ecosystem you could find it’s a constant war between species just for basic survival with no real meaning behind it
I’ve been grappling this for a while now, and how to think about it. It’s so sad that just about every being has to constantly work and suffer to prolong their existence (which only consists of work and suffering).
To what extent should we avoid the suffering? To what extent should we embrace it? Prolong it? Are there different types of suffering? Are some more preferable to others? Is suffering to produce art, or other creative work, better than the suffering of menial labour or going hungry?
How much should your children suffer? Should they suffer rigorous education and studying, or should you only occupy yourself with providing for them? Should you provide them a wealth of knowledge of life lessons and wisdom, or try to build up the largest pile of inheritance you can?
you can do everything “right” in life and still lose.
Physically painful chronic diseases
Life is fleeting, it’s short, and some people seem to only exist to make it as horrible for others as possible.
I’m struggling to think of an answer, but I guess the injustice of life in many forms. Some bad people have more success and luck than some good people. Alzheimers can make us forget the love of our lives after a long, happy life.
We die too quickly and not all of us experience all facets of life due to increasing inequality and decreasing social mobility.
I strongly believe life would be better for everyone due to these two factors alone
Lack of agency
Lord of the flies was a thinly-veiled allegory for how the world actually works. There’s no growup keeping it in check, we’re on our own, and we’re not great at it.
The many ways people try to make it not that. Like just lying to themselves. Or scapegoating some subset of humanity they’re not in for it (which happens equally across the political spectrum).
Becoming old
For me it’s the nature of time. As you get older the amount of time you have had experienced grows, so new time feels quicker in comparison. So time speeds up just as you learn to enjoy it.
The fact that I’m stuck in a human body. I’m a wolf, dammit.
– Frost
Having a pattern finding machine between your ears that desperately tries to find meaning/reason/purpose in a meaningless universe
There is no karma, evil assholes get away with it and live to ripe old ages far more often than they should
Maybe there’s Heaven and Hell, though. Hopefully, right?
the very idea of some post-life reckoning is just a tool of social control meant to keep the workers from turning on their betters, because “it’ll all be made right in the end”.
what did the king say to the pope?
you keep em dumb, i’ll keep em poor
I don’t think that’s the origin, just the way belief/religion has been used by some immoral leaders. 🤷
You gotta get food. Like every day. Even when you can’t or don’t want to.
3 years I had a normal blood pressure.
5 years and 2 months ago I had a back.
10 years ago I had knees.
Oh, and I haven’t slept more than 5 or 6 hours a night in several years and most of the time I’m lucky to get 4.
I truly do not mind getting older. It has a lot of benefits, but damn… I’d like there be enough of my body left to enjoy it.
That eventually you have to say goodbye to parents, grandparents, animals, and loved ones - and there will always be a void you can’t fill that they filled.
Grief is the price of love. 🥲
that assumes they haven’t been a burden.
the best thing that ever happened to me was my dad dying. a huge cloud of anger, hate, and bitterness lifting out of my life.
same with the loss of some ex girlfriends, or an ailing parent who has been slowly decaying and sucking out your time, money, and emotions with nothing coming back to you. my mother has dementia it has no redeeming quality and has been nothing but a black hole on my life for years now. the sooner she dies the better. when she passes there won’t be a void, the void is her being alive.
A tad fucked that you only think of the current and not the length of their impact on your life. Yes, the current can be bad, but you have think about the impact they have - especially if someone has dementia.
you assume the impact on my life was positive instead of negative.
Not all people are loving and kind. Some people have very limited redeeming qualities. Like, wow my mom bought me some nice presents for Xmas… doesn’t really make up for the 20+ years of verbal abuse and resentment and her taking out of her lack of happiness in life on her child. The only redeeming qualities my parents had were examples of who not to be.
The first time I ever felt safe and happy in my life was college. The first time I came back from my first break I bawled my eyes out because I’d never ever before in my life felt safe and encouraged and positive before. It was mind-blowing that adults who were open minded and kind existed, because I grew up in a shithole rural town where such adults simple didn’t exist and most adults were miserable people who were full of hate and rage towards anything that wasn’t sitting on your ass and watching TV and complaining about life.
And yet despite all the horror they forced upon me, I was a decent enough person to care for them as they die. Not because I love them, because I refuse to be as shitty, selfish, and awful to them as they were to me.
