Problems add a sense of meaning and importance to our life
Wish they taught such things at school
Our struggles determine our success. Our problems birth our happiness, along with slightly better, slightly upgraded problems.
Because happiness requires struggle. It grows from problems. Joy doesn‘t just sprout out of the ground like daisies and rainbows. Real, serious, lifelong fulfillment and meaning have to be earned through the choosing and managing of our struggles.
No, not that airy-fairy, eternal bliss, end-of-all-suffering, bullshitty kind of enlightenment. On the contrary, I see practical enlightenment as becoming comfortable with the idea that some suffering is always inevitable- that no matter what you do, life is comprised of failures, loss, regrets, and even death. Because once you become comfortable with all the shut that life throws at you, you become invincible in a sort of low-level spiritual way.
Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience. Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires.
As the existential philosopher Albert Camus said “you will never be happy is you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life”
Or our more simply: Don‘t try
The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one‘s negative experience is itself a positive experience
