Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it – Hen3ry. 
I am mostly hoping to be hit by a meteorite some day soon.
Life isn’t any one thing. It is different for every person who experiences it.
If I were asked by an alien if it’s worth donning a human suit to experience our version of life, I’d tell this individual that it depends on what you want to get out of it. Do you want to learn a lot and feel yourself evolve? Go for it. Do you want to feel maximal joy and minimal pain? No, it’s not worth it. The highs are high, but man, when things suck, they really really suck! Plenty of people decide to bail out early, that’s how bad it can get. So before you start grabbing human suits off the rack, you need to think very carefully about what you want to get out of this thing called “life”.
(When I’m feeling unhappy about my life, I remind myself that I can’t feel too bad, since I was warned about unhappiness right before I pulled the monstro suit off the rack. This is what I get for not listening to good advice! :D)
That. If the OP was suffering from a terminal disease in war-torn fourth world country after crops have failed, I doubt his attitude, regardless how positive, would prevent his life from sucking, for instance.
I’m tired of people crapping in my life.
A friend’s son just turned six. I gave him a nice bd gift, then suggested he really enjoy being six, because at seven things begin going downhill. It was a joke. But my friend had to explain the joke that evening, as his son took it seriously.
Life is a beautiful mess!
(Firstly, that should be self evident, and secondly, it should have been a choice!:D)
In the Tom Waits/Jim Jarmusch movie Down By Law, Roberto Benigni’s character Roberto says,
[QUOTE=Roberto]
It is a sad and beautiful world.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve always loved that line, and it was an accident.
[QUOTE=IMDB]
Roberto Benigni’s line “It’s a sad and beautiful world” was the result of a misunderstanding. The script read “That’s sad and beautiful music”, but Benigni said “It’s a sad and beautiful word”, but Waits and Jarmusch misheard it and though he said “WORLD”, and so, the line stuck.
[/QUOTE]
I’d say it just a little differently. Life, as a whole, is a sad experience. A sad experience, however, with beautiful interludes.
A few months ago, the missus and I were having a friendly squabble over the temperature. I was sitting in my leather recliner, enjoying the multi-zone central airconditioning as an amazing scifi show played on the flat screen TV. While also keeping an eye on the steaks outside the window (on the grill). Then later I pressed the buttons to retract the room slides on the RV and we moved to a different park. I actually camp better than most of humanity has ever lived.
On the back deck of my home, I have a personal “hot spring” (spa) that keeps clean water hot and bubbling 24/7 for me to hop into anytime I feel the urge. I have a small rectangular device in my pocket which can bring up most of the combined knowledge of the human race, or can summon a smiling teenager to the door with a hot pizza. When enjoying a day of sunshine and water with the family, the mere touch of a few switches starts the rumble of hundreds and hundreds of horses beneath the deck. And if I desire, I can crack a whip over their heads and command them to hurtle us across the water at dizzying speed just because we’re getting too warm. Seriously, I can order up wind if that’s my whim.
To the people of the past, we live in a time of magic. And do things routinely that Kings of the past couldn’t even imagine. IMO, I live in the greatest State, of the greatest Country, in the greatest era in which humans have ever existed.
Why so many are bitching and whining remains a mystery to me.
Because everyone’s life experiences are different. You are not necessarily more virtuous than a miserable person just because you are fortunate enough to enjoy all the perks that come with being you…perks that they may not necessarily have. You may just be luckier than they are or made of tougher stuff.
I was not abused as a child and did not grow up malnourished. I am not burdened by care-taking. I have all the disposal income I desire, and so do the people I associate with. I am in great health. I don’t suffer from severe mental illness. I have a sense of purpose when I go into work every day. I believe that most people who know me at least respect me, if not like me. I am not weighed down by toxic people. I’ve never been victimized by violence.
If I didn’t have any of these things going for me, I’d likely be one of those people who are always bitching and whining.
Related to my last post:
Life can be great or it can be torture, if you are relatively physically and mentally healthy and live in a nice country life can be very good. But anything could happen at anytime and turn your life to shit: The death of a child, becoming a quadriplegic things like this could easily turn your happy life into a shit existence if you can’t cope.
I think mostly life is fine just as it is, even the not so fine bits, because I, like everyone else, overestimate how bad the bad bits will make me feel and exaggerate how good the good bits will make me feel.
Life is what you make of it. If you decide to get an education and a good job and make smart decisions about your acquaintances, finances, etc., life will probably be pretty durn good. If you decide to sit around doing drugs or committing crimes, life will probably suck.
Personally, I’ve decided to get an education and a good job and make smart decisions about my acquaintances, finances, etc., but in addition I sit around sometimes doing drugs, which in and of itself is a crime. So my life sucks pretty durn good!
Another Down By Law quote:
[QUOTE=Roberto]
I scream. You scream. We all scream. For ice cream.
[/QUOTE]
Most of the time – generally, in my glummer moods – I concur with this. I feel that George Orwell nailed it (mind you, he was a famously gloomy, “glass-half-empty”, character). Quoting approximately: “Although most people manage, in the course of their lives, to have a fair amount of fun – essentially, life is suffering”.
I’d suspect that this has been the way of things throughout history – largely irrespective of physical conditions: luxury, primitive hardship and squalor, and all stages in between. People deal with the conditions they’re used to, or become used to.
Those things don’t make people happy, that is the problem. Wealth and luxury items are nice but that isn’t the same thing as happiness, inner peace, a sense of safety and security, meaningful emotional connections to others, good mental health etc.
Much of how content you are in life seems to come down to a few things (from what I can tell)
What are your genetics (people have different set levels of resiliency and happiness)
What was your upbringing like
How many traumatic events have you undergone and how many remain unsolved or darkened your personality and worldview
How meaningful and supporting are your personal relationships.
I envy people whose default setting is to enjoy life and feel safe. Sometimes life is decent. But for some of us the needle has been moved to the left side of the bell curve and there isn’t much we can do about it. Yeah, in 50 years when neuroscience is much more advanced we will be able to do something about it but as of 2014 it feels like there aren’t a lot of options to move the needle closer to the default ‘life is enjoyable’ range. Psychology just isn’t advanced enough yet. Luxury items don’t really make a difference. I have a car with leather seats, a flat screen TV, thousands of songs on my phone, etc. Those things aren’t the same as inner peace or contentment.