Suffering is unavoidable and it will come at a certain point as sure as the sun will rise, and this is pretty damn high probability based on all of our sunrise experiences by now. The only people who don’t experience a certain dose of suffering are psychopaths who have no regard of others, no shame, no remorse, no guilt, just pure undiluted manipulation and delusions of grandeur.

But all suffering is not the same, no matter how unavoidable its oncoming. The difference is goal. Once you take suffering as a given (which can be of course ameliorated by the truth or worsened by not taking personal responsibility at least for yourself), you’ll notice something – How come some people come out of it better and some bitter? Goals! Suffering without a goal makes you angry, disillusioned and that makes you mean and cruel, which in turn makes you believe that everything in this world is just as you are – because we see the world as we are, not as it is. Your meanness starts to multiply and at the end of an aimless goalless life you end up believing in the utter malevolence of the world and possibly with buckets of resentment and blaming others for your predicament. The thing is you never took responsibility of building your world.

Once you have a goal the picture changes. Suffering in vane is intolerable, but suffering for something, although hard and heart breaking, is fueled by an aim in sight and therefore bearable, an investment. Not knowing where you’re going and why it hurts the way it does will be the death of beauty and a constant energy drain. Goals give meaning, goals atone the pain, no matter if you reached them or are still working on it. Aimlessness is the death of character; a poison dart that spills over into all areas of life making you less than your true self. Pain isn’t meaningless. It builds you, but only if you know what to do with the bricks. Haul them around and whine about the weight, or put them one on top of the other and build a staircase. Same bricks, different outcomes!