Personally, most of my life has been both difficult and unpleasant due to mental health issues (and capitalism), so I’m just proud of myself for still being here.
Personally, most of my life has been both difficult and unpleasant due to mental health issues (and capitalism), so I’m just proud of myself for still being here.
I think your outlook and mine are similar.
People like to say things like, “It’s so inspiring you got through XYZ! I could never do that!” The news sites run a lot on that sentiment.
But if you look through history, people of all stripes actually are good at surviving through stuff, simply because there’s no choice. You just go forward. You see this in action in war-torn countries…everyone, of all different stripes and different personalities, surviving in one way or another. It’s not all that unusual to survive shitty things.
So I feel like the worth is in what you learned from those experiences, as some people survive them but don’t learn much from it, while others wring the crappy experience of every scrap of knowledge it can possibly offer.
But you can wring experience from good experiences just as well as bad ones, so wouldn’t it be nice if nobody had to have bad experiences?
Basically, I don’t think suffering brings any sort of grace, but if you are forced to suffer, it seems important to wring any scrap of knowledge from it you can. Tear the silver lining out with your fingernails if you have to, haha.
If I learned something doesn’t change whether it was worth it, which is first instinct to ask. I’m not feeling it.