You see it all around: the market selling "happiness" in a bottle, a drink to lift your spirits, or a cream to boost your confidence. If you're sad, drink this! If you're insecure, try that! But have you ever stopped to ask: why do we really need happiness? What if our relentless pursuit of joy isn't actually solving our deepest problem, but merely masking it? The profound truth is, you don't truly crave happiness; what you desperately seek is freedom from suffering.
We are born into this world with an innate understanding of loss and sorrow. Just as we seek answers because there are questions, and solutions because there are problems, we chase joy because we experience pain. But here's the kicker: your inner self, in its misguided wisdom, believes that the path to liberation from sorrow lies through happiness. So, you run headlong towards it, collecting experiences, possessions, and fleeting moments of pleasure. Yet, time and again, you find that happiness doesn't eliminate suffering; it merely covers it up, like a thin veil, only for the underlying pain to resurface.
This isn't just a fleeting observation; it's a profound cycle. You spend your entire life pursuing happiness, thinking it will finally make the pain disappear. But what if, instead of healing, the pursuit of happiness actually sustains your suffering? The core issue isn't a lack of happiness, but the relentless persistence of sorrow itself. Understanding this difference is crucial: eliminating suffering is one thing, but endlessly chasing fleeting happiness is an entirely different, often counterproductive, path. To truly be free, you must ask a deeper, more unsettling question: who, exactly, is suffering? Could it be that your very existence, the "you" that experiences sorrow, is intrinsically linked to the sorrow itself? What if the "patient" is the "illness"? What if, unbelievably, you are the source of your own pain?
