Most Suffering Is Memory or Imagination
On suffering as a substitute for action
Right now, reading this, where is your suffering?
Scan your immediate physical environment. Are you in danger? Is something actively harming you? Is pain occurring in this precise moment?
Probably not. You’re sitting somewhere, reading, physically unharmed. Yet if you’re like most people, you’re carrying weight. Anxiety about tomorrow. Resentment about last week. Fear about next month. Regret about last year. The suffering is real, vivid, sometimes overwhelming. But it isn’t happening now. It’s happening in your relationship with time that isn’t present.
Seneca observed people who seemed perpetually tormented despite living in material comfort and physical safety. He’d ask what was wrong and they’d describe elaborate scenarios: what might happen if their investments fail, what could occur if they lose their position, how others might judge them, what catastrophes could befall their children. None of these things were happening. Yet the suffering from imagining them was as intense as if t…