Caerus

Do you have a bed and a blanket? Food in your fridge? Can you sleep in most days? CAn you eat however much you want and what you want? Can you distract yourself with anything at any time? Can you say whatever you please without getting persecuted? CAn you waste away your days without facing any drawbacks? Is your room well-tempered? Is your tuition already paid? Can you drop your studies and begin something new if you want to? Do you have the option to just start over after three years of bachelor? Have you ever had to work for yourself out of necessity? Is your tap water drinkable? Do you have time to worry about life when really you don’t have to? Can you just stay home when you’re injured or sick? Or when you just don’t feel like it? Can you reach every person that you know with just a few button presses? Do you have money to spend on luxury items? Can you reach the next supermarket within ten minutes? Can you expect people to accept you for who you are? Do you have people you can confide in if you aren’t well?  Do you have the freedom to do whatever you want? Can you spend money on a weekly basis on getting drunk or high? Can you eat so all your nutritional needs are covered? CAn you eat much more than you feel like eating? Can you wear a different outfit every day of the week or the month even? Can you expect that whatever ailment you might have will get cured? Can you expect to live out your full life expectancy? Can you actively choose to do things that will reduce your life expectancy? Can you close your door and lock the world out? Can you force your life to be ordered? 

Yes, yes, yes, a hundred times yes. My life is incredibly easy, much easier than most people’s lives on this planet and yet I complain about the weather, where rain would be a blessing for millions of millions of people. I complain that one supermarket didn’t have eggs and I had to walk to another, where people have never and will never see food in quantities as large. I complain about being hungry and when eating I complain that the food I just ordered doesn't taste the way I like it to be, where people go without foods for days. I complain about my uni workload, something I chose of my own accord, where there are people that have never seen a university from the inside and education is something they can only dream of.

My life is incredibly easy and chances are so is yours. The abundance we live in has made us soft and spoiled, life is no longer a constant struggle to survive but a constant struggle to “feel good” and “be happy”, whatever that might mean. 

Imagine taking a lioness from the wilderness and expecting her to be happy in the zoo. That’s not going to happen. Yet we expect the same of us, an animal hard-wired for struggle, an animal made to live in nature, an animal capable of incredible feats we today think impossible. Denying our nature is a recipe for disaster. Making life easier made it inadvertently harder, us worse. For any problem that we as humans face today, there is a human reason. Look inside, you know it to be true. Appreciate the excess we live in and then learn to do without. Toughen up.