Stink of Garbage
On my daily ride to badminton, there’s a stretch of road with a heap of garbage. My instinct is to clamp my nose and breathe through my mouth, while thoughts rush in—how careless people are, why we can’t be better as a society. And in that moment, I suffer.
The odd part is, I don’t do anything about it. I’m not cleaning it up. I’m only resisting it in my head.
Today I tried something different. Instead of avoiding, I allowed myself to smell it. Reality, as it is. And I noticed—it wasn’t as bad as I had imagined. The wind shifts, the nose adjusts, and often there’s hardly any smell at all.
That’s when it struck me: most suffering comes not from the thing itself, but from our resistance to it. We live in imagination more than in reality. By fighting what is, we double our pain. By accepting, we cut it in half.
Garbage is just garbage. But the same applies to traffic, to noise, to heat, even to the uncomfortable moments in life. The mind wants to avert, but often it’s that very aversion that makes life harder.
Sometimes the lighter path is not escape, but acceptance. I understand what you are saying here, but many voices -- some from below, some from above -- use this argument to justify the abandonment of standards: first particular standards, then standards in general. Any relief they gain thereby is transitory and yields to greater misery, of a kind that is not anticipatory but immediate. This was a more philosophical thought rather than particular case. I am not sure if I understood your comment, do you mind elaborating ? Each one says, The Enemy is ___________: a faction, or a propaganda, or an ethnicity, or a technology, or piles of garbage next the road. My reply is in every case the same: The Enemy is "LOL nothing matters". If one understood nothing matters not just logically but as an intrinsic truth then well “nothing truly matters”. In practice it simply forbids ever saying that anything is not good enough. Similarly, a lot of people start out thinking that money will solve their problems, and it does solve a lot of problems, but people get onto the treadmill of earning more and spending more, when happiness comes from contentment with what you have, not discontent and constant struggle to "get more stuff" Not saying don't be ambitious, not saying don't try, etc - just saying that once you've reached a level of not having to worry about essentials (food, clothing, housing, water, etc) with enough "headroom" to also have fun in life, do you really need more? Will you be happier with more? Really happier? Or will you just get a short burst of happiness, followed by hollowness as you realise that no matter how much you earn, you can blow all of it on crap. Full agree! Though, for many people it’s actually easier to remain on the treadmill and confirm to societal expectations. You can close your eyes and keep going rather than think about the alternative.