The brain evolved in different times and in different ways. As an effect of this, there are a few different layers sort of wrapped around the ones that came before it. The very outer most layer, what we call continuances, came most recently. And it connects to the one below that. And so forth and so on.

See, unhappiness, or what we consider negative emotions are really just the way these two layers learned to communicate. When you feel lonely, it is one layer telling the next that we need to find friends or we will die. When we feel hunger, it is saying we need food to persist. See these negative emotions are the very force that the more basic layers of our brain use to keep us alive.

So often in today’s world, we like to imagine the end of suffering. We think that we should be in a state of bliss without end. But this is death. Without hunger, we starve.

Once you accept this fact, that life is suffering, you can begin to accept the truth. To live is not to deny suffering, but to choose why you embrace it.

You could sit in bed today and starve to death. So then why did you persist? What are you suffering for?

And once you fully commit to your why, can you turn your pain into beauty. Today I suffer so that those who follow after me do not. I suffer for my family. I suffer to help those in need. I suffer to make the world a better place when I leave it.

Suffering is the most beautiful thing in the world. It means that for a brief moment you were alive and fighting against the universe to leave a mark that can not be forgotten.

Go forth and suffer beautifully.