The Pursuit of Meaning
On one hand, telling people to just “suck it up” and to simply endure unrelenting injustice while doing absolutely nothing to ameliorate conditions merely telegraphs your privilege.
The Profound Emptiness of ‘Resilience’ • 2015 Dec 1 • Parul Sehgal • New York Times
On the other hand, you still have to survive this life, and sometimes you will be forced to encounter and suffer through grave injustice.
Having purpose—even if it’s utterly delusional—will help get you through dark times. Sometimes the system will kill you anyway, but how you endure the end is still important.
There’s More to Life Than Being Happy • 2013 Jan 9 • Emily Esfahani Smith • The Atlantic
It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.
—Viktor Frankl
I do feel vindicated by scientific studies that support the Art of Not Wanting with is kind of a critical tenet of Buddhism.
Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it
—Viktor Frankl