Everybody has a picture of the life they want to live and compares that to the life they're living. That's normal, rare are those for whom the two are indentical. Hence, as one Buddhist monk was kind enough to edify me, we have things we don't want and don't have things we want, only two components of the Buddhist take on suffering (dukkha). I suppose wanting to live another person's life boils down to these two states of dissatisfaction. To add insult to injury, one usually encounters an individual who has a life that matches your conception of an ideal life. Then, not only do you curse your luck, you also must now suffer the ignominy of being green with envy. Double whammy!

Everybody has a picture of the life they want to live and compares that to the life they're living. That's normal, rare are those for whom the two are indentical. Hence, as one Buddhist monk was kind enough to edify me, we have things we don't want and don't have things we want, only two components of the Buddhist take on suffering (dukkha). I suppose wanting to live another person's life boils down to these two states of dissatisfaction. To add insult to injury, one usually encounters an individual who has a life that matches your conception of an ideal life. Then, not only do you curse your luck, you also must now suffer the ignominy of being green with envy. Double whammy! — Agent Smith

It appears then that suffering is embedded in the very nature of living. It would be unfair that everything around us suffers and yet we do not. Now we must consider "fairness" as part of life, an eternal balance I suppose?

Imagine knowing what will happen for most occasions, and having to dread through the unbearable moments with agonizing, slow gnawing, suffocation and despair. — chiknsld

Reminds me of this from psychologist George Kelly:

Confusion and the Clock:
Some Things I would Like to Know, But Not Yet

It has often occurred to me, as I am sure it has to you too, that it would be amusing to have a peek through the curtain of night at what tomorrow has in store. Suppose I could observe what I would be doing at this time tomorrow night. It might be interesting to watch the goings on from this present vantage point of the evening before, yet not to participate in them, nor to be concerned with whether I was doing what I was supposed to be doing, nor even to be in any danger of being recognized as an intruder. Such a thing would have to be done surreptitiously, however, for I am sure if I were to be caught at my eavesdropping, my tomorrow's I (How do you say that?) would become self-conscious about the arrangement and start acting in an un- natural manner. He might not even do things the way he was destined to do them, and the whole affair might fall apart in a shambles of irreality.
But if I could manage to keep out of sight, so that all the performers in tomorrow evening's episode would act the way the sum-total of their previous experiences supposedly required them to act, that is, would act naturally, the affair might come off pretty well. Now that I think of it, the other people, other than myself-tomorrow and myself-today, ought to be easy enough to fool, even if they did get a glimpse of me eavesdropping. They would probably no more than mistake me for myself-tomorrow, and think it quite natural that I should be there - unless, of course, I was wearing a different colored shirt, or hadn't shined my shoes, as I haven't to- night. So that part of the arrangement has a reasonable chance of being worked out, in spite of what some of my more skeptical readers - not you; I didn't mean you! - are likely to think.
Where I would get into trouble, if I weren't extremely careful, is with myself. Perhaps if I arrived in some kind of disguise, it would keep me from finding myself out. Now, let's see: I could go as my Cousin Leander. I don't know him very well, and if I looked a little familiar to myself, there would be a perfectly logical explanation.
Leander, however, if I remember correctly, is a little nearsighted, and, unless his nearsight- edness has been offset by presbyopia during the last ten years, he might miss a good deal of what was going on. Besides, I doubt if Cousin Leander would be very much interested in what I am going to do tomorrow night. That wouldn't be a real obstacle, of course, since I would on- ly be pretending to myself that I was Cousin Leander.
Still, the performance would have to be pretty good - pretty realistic, I mean - to fool me.

Here’s the rest of it:

https://www.aippc.it/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/2015.01.003.019.pdf

Brilliant! :) Thank you for sharing.

I think the real issue at hand is the recurrence of time. That is, what if our suffering is due to repetition of experiencing time?

Those with no major ailments and who are merely suffering from boredom could actually be suffering not from the fact that they have nothing new to do, but rather from the repetitiveness of their own existence.

This gnawing at them that they have been here before and have done this a dozen times would never truly fade. New experiences will never feel as good as imagined. That is, the actual real occurrence of a fortunate event would never feel as good as one would hope.

Even if we were to take away all hopes, all purpose, all self-driven goals, and feel a simple peace in our hearts, we would still have to be patient with the fact that this is ultimately only the recurrence of time. And the time spent today is the same time spent yesterday, the same time will be spent tomorrow and so on.

Let us then have patience so that our hearts will be filled with the peace it deserves.

Imagine knowing what will happen for most occasions, and having to dread through the unbearable moments with agonizing, slow gnawing, suffocation and despair. — chiknsld

I hold a paradoxical view of boredom, the basis of your thesis on repetition of events. Rather than expressing the lack of change, it indicates the incipient movement into uncharted waters. Boredom and monotony are symptoms not of the too-predictable, but of a previously mobile, fluidly self-transformative engagement with the world beginning to become confused and disoriented. Boredom is the first stage of creativity. We can’t become bored until change has already knocked at our door.

. And the time spent today is the same time spent yesterday, the same time will be spent tomorrow and so on. — chiknsld

One can never experience events in time as identical , since time never doubles back or exactly reproduces events. One only experiences them as similar. And this experience only becomes traumatic , restless, boring , despairing if it ceases to be familiar, if it instead droops us into a hole of chaos.

I hold a paradoxical view of boredom, the basis of your thesis on repetition of events. Rather than expressing the lack of change, it indicates the incipient movement into uncharted waters. Boredom and monotony are symptoms not of the too-predictable, but of a previously mobile, fluidly self-transformative engagement with the world beginning to become confused and disoriented. Boredom is the first stage of creativity. We can’t become bored until change has already knocked at our door. — Joshs

Truly remarkable. :nerd:

One can never experience events in time as identical , since time never doubles back or exactly reproduces events. One only experiences them as similar. And this experience only becomes traumatic , restless, boring , despairing if it ceases to be familiar, if it instead droops us into a hole of chaos. — Joshs

Your expression is astonishing. I deleted my response several times because what you wrote, the more I think about it, the more deeply I become entrenched in its hold. Your description is crystalline clear.

I think it is just as easy to say that chaos is then the cause of our suffering, but then you throw "creativity" into the mix and now it's as if "suffering" no longer exists. Bravo!

Life presents itself chiefly as a task—the task, I mean, of subsisting at all, gagner sa vie. If this is accomplished, life is a burden, and then there comes the second task of doing something with that which has been won—of warding off boredom, which, like a bird of prey, hovers over us, ready to fall wherever it sees a life secure from need. The first task is to win something; the second, to banish the feeling that it has been won; otherwise it is a burden.

Human life must be some kind of mistake. The truth of this will be sufficiently obvious if we only remember that man is a compound of needs and necessities hard to satisfy; and that even when they are satisfied, all he obtains is a state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but abandonment to boredom. This is direct proof that existence has no real value in itself; for what is boredom but the feeling of the emptiness of life? If life—the craving for which is the very essence of our being—were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing. But as it is, we take no delight in existence except when we are struggling for something; and then distance and difficulties to be overcome make our goal look as though it would satisfy us—an illusion which vanishes when we reach it; or else when we are occupied with some purely intellectual interest—when in reality we have stepped forth from life to look upon it from the outside, much after the manner of spectators at a play. And even sensual pleasure itself means nothing but a struggle and aspiration, ceasing the moment its aim is attained. Whenever we are not occupied in one of these ways, but cast upon existence itself, its vain and worthless nature is brought home to us; and this is what we mean by boredom. The hankering after what is strange and uncommon—an innate and ineradicable tendency of human nature—shows how glad we are at any interruption of that natural course of affairs which is so very tedious.

:hearts: