141. A Warning You Must Heed

You see how the world works and you want it to be different. You know there must be another way. A way that would be more equitable and just. A way that would greatly reduce unnecessary pain and suffering. A way that would provide more joyful and fulfilling lives for everyone. You want this better world but you aren’t sure how to create it.

You find yourself often thinking about the problem, but it always ends in frustration. There doesn’t seem to be anything you can do to create significant change in the world. You might be able to assist those at greatest risk in your own community, but at what personal cost? You would have to witness so much suffering, and even with immense effort you would only be able to alleviate a tiny fraction of their pain. Would you be able to handle that? Wouldn’t it slowly drain everything out of you, until there is nothing left?

You have no satisfactory answers. It feels like the available options would make life impossibly difficult for you. And you can see that the world offers a simple alternative. You can close your eyes to suffering. You can work a normal job with normal hours. You can become a cog in the machine. Isn’t this also a more peaceful way to live? And isn’t happiness a kind of peace? You can’t escape the feeling that your own life would be better if you just gave in.

But when you think about actually doing it — when you think about what that life would be like for you — you start to feel an anxiety so powerful it verges on panic. There’s a worry that will not subside, a worry that seems to originate in the depths of your soul. It’s the worry that you are about to make a horrible mistake, that you are not only at risk but in great danger.

This is a warning you must heed. It is telling you that to give up, to abandon yourself to the false peace of life within the confines of a rigid and harmful system, would mean an existence far too lacking in purpose and meaning to be tolerable.