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#14 “Choose Your Pain.”

Hope is darkness that could consume you…

“There are many interpretations of the Pandora’s box myth, the most common being that while the gods punished us with all the evils of the world, they also equipped us with the one antidote to those evils: hope… But here’s another, less popular interpretation of the Pandora’s box myth: What if hope is not the antidote to evil? What if hope is just another form of evil? What if hope just got left in the box?”

– Mark Manson.

A lesson in Occupational and Spiritual Wellness…

As an Amazon Affiliate it is policy to inform you that this is an advertisement. However, this is still a reflection of a great book that I’ve read many times over. I believe it would benefit any who may read it. You can find the link for it in my references located at the bottom of this page.


Hope and ambition

We’ve opened the mind. We’ve covered everything you need to cultivate the fighting spirit. Now, it’s time to tap into the killer instinct… And the first lesson is about not being a sucker…

Life is not a game. Going about life expecting a “fair” shot is naive. We typically carry expectations of fairness wherever there is order. Eventually, we must grow out of this childish way of viewing the world. Order means survival, not fairness. Fairness is actually a privilege. It comes from love. If you are valued, you will be treated fairly. Order makes sure everyone is respected. Order does NOT ensure that everyone is treated equally. Equal treatment actually goes against order. A king doesn’t have to bow to a peasant.

We only fear death when there has been too much left undone. During our very first meeting, I explained how happiness isn’t sustainable. It isn’t a result we should pursue. Satisfaction is the outcome you’re looking for. You wish to be happy because you’re full of hope. Your hopes are exactly what intensifies your suffering. Ambition is the professional word for it. Ambition is what makes humanity appear so evil. It’s the fuel of greed. Keeping your ambition in check is paramount to your occupational wellness. 

By the end of this meditation, I want you hopeless. Who are always the biggest suckers in this world? The ones full of hope. The essence of dark psychology is manipulating people through their darkest emotions, such as fear or anger. When taking dark psychology into account, wouldn’t this make ‘hope’ a dark emotion? I believe so. I believe hope is darkness. Something that could consume us if we rely on it too much.

It’s impossible to completely extinguish hope. We couldn’t make progress without it. However, hope is only a delusion to a weak mind. A gamble. Once your hopes have been crushed, you’ll believe almost anything that promises a way to end your suffering. There is no end to your suffering. But hope tricks you into thinking there is. 

Hope makes fools of us

Hope is something that can be sold to you. You can be tricked into thinking you are giving hope. A Charlatan’s talent is selling water to fish. They never forget that life is what you make of it. So, they sell hope to the hopeful, knowing they will subscribe to their teachings. No matter where you are in life, it’s going to suck royally. If you managed to make it from the bottom all the way up financially, you’re still going to suffer. Because there’s no escaping suffering for long.

Because of hope, reality is often disappointing. And this shocks us into either apathy or nihilism. The world is boring and painful. Life sucks and then you die. So, we spend our lives chasing pleasure instead of choosing our pain, which makes everything worse for everyone. Happiness is a drug that eventually wears off. Instead, pursue satisfaction. Satisfaction is about keeping a short list of strong values. 

Our values are so powerful because they have stories behind them. We didn’t just create our values one day. We have lessons behind them. They color how we see the world. Your values are what make sense to you emotionally and logically. Our instincts are a product of our values. This is why our instincts are hard to control.  Our values mean that much to us. Logic and emotion. To neglect either is to lose your identity.

Dysfunctional Values

It takes a long time to adjust our values if we ever do. It takes intense training to change our instincts, but we are still operating by instinct at all times. Patience isn’t suppressing your emotions. Without emotion, we would just sit around and record our surroundings. Doing nothing with that information.  Patience is simply giving yourself time to see the patterns. Allowing wisdom time to catch up to you.

Rational thought and effective learning require emotion and logic. Take either one of them away, and your thoughts become useless noise. This is why you can’t watch a boring movie or read a textbook. During introspection, we try to use our logic to bring meaning to our emotions. If we use the wrong logic to make sense of our emotions, we are creating dysfunctional values. Dysfunction becomes greed. A greedy person is incapable of truly contributing anything to the world. They will always take more than they contribute.

Structures always crumble under dysfunctional values. Dysfunctional programming makes us spiritually fragile. We won’t be able to handle an unfair world. We will go out into the world only to be crushed. Having too many values is also a sign of greed. The more values you hold, the easier you are to disrespect. Satisfaction focuses on what is attainable and sustainable. Clear the dysfunction from your character. Greed and ambition make a dangerous combination. 

To give only to receive is a greedy way to look at the world. But giving just for the sake of being good is stupidity. To contribute within reason is the classic definition of virtue. Virtue also adheres to sound logic. Hope does not. Hope actually can make us do the most ridiculous things. Our hopes are something we would die for. This goes against real virtue. As long as we can adapt to the continuous suffering in this world, we can continue to take in the critical information around us. We can keep moving and help to find new ways to adapt.

We have been wrong about the nature of hope our entire lives. Hope is not an antidote. It is poison. Hope denies reality. It places your mind in an alternate future instead of the present. To be better takes a conscious effort. Hope will only result in a half-assed attempt. Motivation is great. We all need it. But eventually, motivation must become discipline. Discipline only exists in the present. In reality. This is the difference between a master and a commoner. Masters achieve discipline through the pain they choose. They don’t stop just because their lives weren’t everything they hoped for. 

Maturity

Hope is a lot like fire. It could keep you warm, or it could burn your house down. Like fire, you must be careful where you place your hope. A child would set fires willy nilly. An immature adult is much the same way.  Because immaturity comes from the perception of abundance. 

Having an abundance of choices is not freedom. This is variety. Variety gives us too much information to take in. When we have variety, we will not commit to anything. Experienced salesmen understand this, that’s why when you consult them, they never give you a variety of choices. They only give you two. With variety, you are still lost. You aren’t actually free until you’ve found your way. 

An immature adult can’t commit to a purpose. They can’t commit to relationships. Once it’s no longer fun, they run off like any other child. To an immature mind, the best answer is always a fresh start. Placing their hopes willy nilly and taking a gamble. Consequences be damned. Maturity is a process, and a lot of adults today have never actually reached that final stage. 

The first step to maturity is learning what NOT to do. It’s easier to learn what’s important when you understand how bad things can be. The first step is based on your experiences. The type of people who like to say “you aren’t a man until you do xyz” typically haven’t made it past the first stage of maturity. This is why you don’t spoil your children.

The second step to maturity is understanding your limits. There’s only so much you can do. There’s even less that you can claim to be good at. Once you have wisdom to know what you can’t change, you can improve from there. Most of us make it to this point. This is what it means to be common. 

The third step to maturity is learning the consequences of your choices. Those who don’t take accountability for their lives are the same people who get taken advantage of. These are the uncommon types of people walking around. They almost get it. They are productive, but they still see the world in a greedy way.

The final stage of maturity is learning how to contribute within reason. Not just because of a huge payoff. Not because you’ll look good. Because it reduces the suffering for everyone. To survive in this life, you need to be able to take. But to thrive, you must give there is no other way. This is what is expected of an adult. The only path left to the adult is mastery.

The right way to hope

Maturity has nothing to do with age. At least past adolescence. Some people grow up quickly. Some didn’t have a choice. Abuse is more common than you think and takes many forms. The victims of abuse believe that the world is an unfair place. Unfortunately, they are correct. However, they learned this uncomfortable truth in the worst possible way. Traumatized people never find their real purpose in life. They are essentially stuck in time. Perhaps they may latch on to some false calling, but their entire existence will be based on pain they didn’t choose. 

Despair is also a product of fairness. The belief that you have been cheated. Life is not a game. Even if you are disadvantaged, no one is going to pull through for you. Fairness makes it okay to be entitled. There is no such thing as fair. Only order. Forget what is fair or unfair. This will only afflict you. You can only win playing YOUR game. That’s how a master does things. 

Every generation seems to get softer due to the exponential progress we have made. It’s easier than ever to be competitive now. It’s not just because everyone is weak. It because our problems aren’t as bad as they used to be. On the flipside of this competitive age, it’s become easier than ever to waste your time. There are so many routes we can take. Not all of them lead to the other side. Some routes take us in circles. Others lead us to false callings, which leads to crippling despair in the long term. This is the problem with variety.

Freedom is about choosing what NOT to do. You can choose NOT to be a child. You can choose NOT to complain. You can choose NOT to get distracted. You can choose NOT to give up on your path. Abundance isn’t a goal. It’s a problem. The only thing that is truly abundant in this world is pain. Pain will never leave you. Limiting your choices is the key to freedom.

Back to our fire analogy. We need fire, don’t we? We do, but an adult knows how to use it properly. We should put our hopes into what we’ve built.  If you’ve built nothing, then your hopes are simply delusions. You are not using your imagination correctly. Our hopes belong to what can outlive us. My blog and this meditation page give me hope. Hope that it could improve someone else’s life besides my own. Hope that my skills continue to improve. It gives me a way to contribute within reason through my talent.

Choose your pain

You choose your pain. Your satisfaction is your job. And after you die, most of what you did isn’t going to matter. It’s bitter coffee, I know. But all that sugar and creamer is bad for you anyway. The more time you waste daydreaming about your hopeful future, the more opportunities slip past you in the present. If that’s you, cut it out. Clear the dysfunction from your character. Have more patience than hope. Take risks, but do not gamble. And forget fairness. What qualifies as fair is constantly changing, and things are changing faster than you might believe…

Everything is fucked is the sort of self-improvement guide that isn’t a waste of time to read. Not only was it very entertaining, it also levels with you on a deep level. This is definitely one of the books on the list I suggest reading at least once. Make sure to click the link at the bottom to check it out yourself!


References and Photos.

Everything Is Fucked: A book about hope. – Mark Manson

Family Guy – Seth Macfarland