Two Reasons Life Can’t Drag You Down (for very long) - Erika Bugbee

Most of the time I know life can’t make me suffer, that the real cause of my suffering is my own thinking. But sometimes I can’t help but feel like there are a few things that are objectively horrid for anyone no matter how they think about it. Maybe the most extreme example would be having someone die. If a person loses someone close to them, they’re bound to feel sad no matter what they’re thinking, right? It seems like that kind of sadness and suffering has nothing to do with thought, that certain events can bypass our thinking and somehow affect us directly.  But recently I was reminded first-hand how the ONLY way life can affect us is through our own thinking, even when it comes to death.

A few months ago one of my uncles died and I went to the memorial. As I’d expected, lots of people were sad. But I was struck by several things:

1. 1.    No two people felt the same way. People that were sad were sad for different reasons, in different ways, and in different amounts. Some were sad because they’d regretted not seeing him more. Some were sad because his professional...