Schopenhauer's characterization of human life can be distilled into a doctrine of deprivationalism as it pertains to human needs and wants. Roughly, deprivationalism is the idea that humans are always at a deficit. When born they are always running a debt by way of "dealing with" or "overcoming".

Let's take some perspectives that show various deficits that always need to be overcome (P).

P1) A person can be born with a myriad of mental or physical illnesses. One I've seen a lot of discussion on in TPF is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). This disorder seems to be genetic in origin, though I don't believe it is isolated to any particular set of genes/proteins. It is most likely brought about in youth at one or more triggering events, or epigenetic events, that then persists, often for life if not treated properly (though treatment seems to allude many with this particular mental disorder). Let us assume the DSM-V does a fairly accurate job describing this disorder. Let us assume it is discrete and is not actually something else entirely in some theory that subsumes it. Let us assume that it is not cultural, but that even in some way hunter-gatherers can experience this disorder. This is just one example of a deficit this person will live with for a lifetime in its mild or extreme forms. This will then follow the individual into socialized life through family, and broader social interactions and affect cognition throughout individual and social living situations. This is just one example of thousands of ways people can be born to contingently deficient circumstances that must be dealt with in some way or overcome.

P2) All people must survive in a cultural milieu of some sort. This means people must be socialized in various cultural contexts for survival. This entails dealing with other people's desires/wants, the vagaries of contingent whims of the marketplace, traffic, managers, standards to live up to, minutia mongering, and essentially getting by in various social contexts ranging from tribal societies to post-industrial economies. Specialized knowledge, many hours of attention to various tasks that one wouldn't do otherwise that "need to get done by someone, if not you then someone else", etc. Even in H-G societies, the damn droughts, need to migrate, food shortages, deadly animals, deadly weather, and pesky other tribesman that keep incurring on your territory. There are many ways survival leads to anxieties (some of life or death, but some of just maintaining), fears, more contingent burdens, etc. Surviving in some cultural context is something that must be dealt with in some way or overcome.

P3) Boredom itself. Schopenhauer discusses how boredom is proof life has no positive value. I think this observation often gets overlooked for its great insight. A being that is fully satiated is one that never wants. We would be everything or we would be nothing. Fully satisfied, fully non-existent. Instead, we have endless goals and desires that move us along. Often we try to cultivate tolerable habits to prevent us from thinking too much of what to do. If we have certain ways of being, forms of life, roles to fulfill, ways to fulfill other's expectations, people to meet, etc. then we can diminish thoughts from getting too existential, too introspective. If this happens the circularity or "vanity" of existence shows itself. We do what we do, but we have no reason other than we cannot stand not doing. Birds can eat their seeds and make their nests and chirp to each other for protection, mating, territorial boundary-making. They just do. Humans have the extra capacity to know that they do, but that they can do otherwise- radical freedom. However, this means that whatever we do is basically because of a deep angst that we cannot stand not doing. Not doing is death, boredom, literally sitting in your own shit. We are always at the deficit of overcoming our own angst. Boredom is something that must be dealt with in some way or overcome.

P4) Schopenhauer often talked about love and sex, more than most others since perhaps the Symposium. The reason for this is simple, love and sex lead to procreation which brings about more deficit into the world. The whole reason anyone is born are one or both of these reasons (love is of course debatable as an emotion, but let's assume it is a real phenomenon). Weeding out outliers like some weird culturally forced situations of sex, we can assume institutions and attitudes around sex, even arranged marriages are acceptable enough to societies because it allows for people to have sex in the confines of some socially-sanctioned way. Again, even in arranged marriages, there may be feelings of fondness, care, and duty to the other person that would presumably enhance the mere physical pleasure of the act itself. But alas, much love and sex leads to much strife. Many people have exhausting relationships, cause each other more pain than if they were alone (but then cannot stand being alone either so bear with it), and many people do not find love at all (sad face sad face). The pursuit of love and sex are yet another deficit that must be dealt with in some way or overcome.

Then there are the "absolute" goods. These I call "absolute" as they are enjoyed universally, and simply intrinsically seem to make people happy. These are 1) physical pleasure 2) aesthetic pleasure (including humor, art, philosophizing, books, etc.), 3) feelings of accomplishment 4) relationships (being with a significant other, friends, family) 5) learning (obtaining information about subjects one wants to know) 6) Flow-states (being "in the zone" in some activity that matches one's interests and abilities) 7) Fulfilling an idealized role (good parent, good worker, good friend, good government official, etc.).

However, for each of these absolute goods, there is always some deficit of not obtaining or having to even get any one of them in the first place. 1) Physical pleasures often lead to wanting more, better, pleasures (hedonic treadmill). Also, they can be addictive or used as a crutch to avoid other realities. 2) aesthetic pleasure often requires more effort. It is not readily available like physical pleasure is, and is harder to maintain or perceive at times. 3) accomplishment obviously comes with its opposite of missing the goal, failing, not achieving one's ends, contingent circumstances getting in the way, and then one has to overcome the feelings of disappointment or frustration. 4) Relationships obviously can lead to strife, drama, and hurt feelings. 5) learning can lead to learning painful things, can often come at a cost of much exhausting work, there can be the fear of losing knowledge, of others knowing more, of having an unbalanced learning of one form of minutia. 6) Flow-states are good but hard to achieve, can lead to disappointment when one gets out of a flow-state and much of life just isn't in a flow-state anyways (other than maybe from the ideas of gurus trying to sell this idea), 7) Role fulfillment can lead to being less aware of one's freedom to not have to fill a role, one can often disappoint and not live up to a goal, etc.

All these deficits are foisted on a person when they are born. People's angst leads to desire for love and sex. Some people who are successful in at least one attempt at this/these have a child and put it through the deficit gauntlet. But as stated above, there is a circularity- a knowing understanding that we are just overcoming and dealing with and then perpetuating to yet other people to overcome and deal with.