TT
No , you didnt answer!
if you did answer then where in your post is your answer?
TT, just how do you cope with it?
can you find an answer to the above question in your below answer?
Seriously? How does anyone choose to live their life?
Think about it. Does a person live their life in accord with what one believes is important to the world or to ones self?
Without knowing the interconnectedness of all things, a conflict may arise between the self interest, and the world interest.
If a cell in the body were to believe itself independent and separate from the body it might worry itself to death for fear it would not do its service to uphold the structure of the body, and by default of delusion become self destructive to both.
Unfortunately we are taught as children to fear for our separation, measure ourselves against social standards, and accept self worth as dictated by others and the standard.
If you could step aside from all of that and find your union with all things there is no struggle or conflict.
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.
