I came across this quote from Seneca, the stoic philosopher: Reasons for anxiety will never be lacking, whether born of prosperity or of wretchedness; life pushes on in a succession of engrossments. We shall always pray for leisure, but never enjoy it.
We often think, if only I did this one thing or if only I had that, my problems would vanish. And while that might solve one challenge, another quickly takes its place. Struggles, it seems, are a constant companion of existence.
Outside famine, serious bodily harm, or death, most struggles are a matter of perspective—what feels overwhelming to one may appear trivial to another. Outlook shapes our sense of suffering.
Children remind us of this every day. They approach us with troubles that seem catastrophic to them. From our vantage point, we may dismiss it as unimportant, yet for them, it feels like the end of the world.
I once listened to a podcast featuring a man who hears the worries of the wealthy for a living. His value lies in listening without judgment. One story stayed with me—a rich client fretting over where to dock his luxury yacht. To us, that may sound absurd, a classic first-world problem. But to him, it was a genuine source of stress.
There’s a memorable line in Fight Club: “The things you own end up owning you.” It sounds profound, and it is—but the inverse is also true. The things you don’t own end up owning you too—through longing, comparison, or regret. As the Seneca quote alludes, anxiety will never be lacking—whether you possess something or not.
The book The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb ends with this: I am sometimes taken aback by how people can have miserable days because they feel cheated by a bad meal, cold coffee, or a social rebuff. We are quick to forget that just being alive is an extraordinary piece of good luck, a remote event, a chance occurrence of monstrous proportions. Imagine a speck of dust next to a planet a billion times the size of earth; the speck represents the odds in favor of your being born. Don’t be like the ingrate who got a castle as a present and worried about the mildew in the bathroom. Stop looking the gift horse in the mouth—remember, you are a Black Swan.
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