What to do with those pesky dreams of a better life
maarten.substack.com
As we suffer through life, we are consoled by the dream that some day, we might finally find some state of happiness and fulfillment. We might dream of winning the lottery, of becoming a celebrated writer, of finding true love… The more we suffer in life, the more feverishly we hold on to that dream. But in these moments our dreams also make us suffer, as we feel we are far removed from realizing them, and we doubt if they will ever be realized. We could go even further and say that this distance from the dream is not merely a secondary, but a primary source of our suffering. Is the poor man unhappy simply because he is poor? It’s easy to imagine a caveman being perfectly happy with a fraction of the material wealth a modern poor man has. Or is the poor man unhappy because he dreams of becoming a rich man, but knows that it will most likely never happen for him?
What to do with those pesky dreams of a better life
What to do with those pesky dreams of a…
What to do with those pesky dreams of a better life
As we suffer through life, we are consoled by the dream that some day, we might finally find some state of happiness and fulfillment. We might dream of winning the lottery, of becoming a celebrated writer, of finding true love… The more we suffer in life, the more feverishly we hold on to that dream. But in these moments our dreams also make us suffer, as we feel we are far removed from realizing them, and we doubt if they will ever be realized. We could go even further and say that this distance from the dream is not merely a secondary, but a primary source of our suffering. Is the poor man unhappy simply because he is poor? It’s easy to imagine a caveman being perfectly happy with a fraction of the material wealth a modern poor man has. Or is the poor man unhappy because he dreams of becoming a rich man, but knows that it will most likely never happen for him?