We typically assume that the ultimate aim of all our efforts is to have a happy life.
And judged on this basis, many of us have to admit — in the silence of our minds — that we are not really doing very well.
There is so much that — every year, and perhaps almost every day — comes along to spoil our ambitions: there is a power struggle at the office, there's a problem in our families, our friends feel superficial or disengaged, our anxieties don't abate and our relationships are scratchy or distant.
Our difficulties generate a basic layer of misery, but then a secondary layer is swiftly added to it — caused by an underlying sense that our unhappiness represents a fundamental violation of life's true purpose.
Not only are we unhappy, we are unhappy that we are unhappy — in the light of our tightly-held belief in the possibility of a state of enduring satisfaction.
We are both sad and crushed that we have failed at the single-most important goal open to all sane and ambitious humans.
It's in such moments of knotted misery that we may gain some relief from reframing our situation.
While we may not be able to overcome our burdens themselves, it does lie in our power to alter what these burdens have to mean to us.
We may not have to take them as proof of our stupidity or ill-adjustment, they can be signs that we are destined to have interesting lives rather than calm ones, lives marked by a high degree of exploration, psychological understanding, and striving rather than settled certainty and equilibrium.
What we lack in terms of contentment, we may make up for in terms of insight and experience.
