Suffering

Hello,

I was attending a presentation skills development training today and the presenter used a great sentence that left a huge impact on me and I can’t stop thinking about it. It was “we suffer more in our imagination than we do in our reality”. How true is that?! We keep thinking about what are the ways it could go wrong or how much pain it might cause you but in reality there’s just one way it could go wrong and pain is gonna be pain. Imagining the results of the same situation 100 times over, we are already experiencing the pain a hundred times before we could actually experience it. Who knows, there might not be a pain that the situation might yield as well. There’s a possibility of the situation not going wrong. It could go well. But we can’t help ourselves.

Funny thinking how it was the opposite in childhood. When there was a trip planned or even for a school field trip or short picnics, I would be imagining a 100 different ways how happy it’s going to be and lose my sleep grinning all night. I would wake up excited the next day as well. Even if the trip didn’t go well as I expected, I would return home happy that I was on a trip with my friends or with my family. I should learn a thing or two from my younger self.

The thing is I am not going to give you advice on how to overcome this overthinking. Because I don’t know the answer myself. Everyday, it’s a new suffering. One day I am worried, if I will have my job 2/3 years down the line. One day I am worried, I have a job but why am I not enjoying it. And then the next day I am worrying if I am enjoying it and wasting money. The suffering and worrying never stops. If you actually think about it, it was all in the head. Nothing happened. Sometimes I worry that nothing is happening as well. Our minds are weird.

Just smile and live. May all our sufferings stop in your imaginations and happiness flourish in reality.