About Chapter 2

About Chapter 2


Imagine a neighboring planet to ours that is inhabited by a people who never experience suffering. They live peacefully, fluctuating between contentment and joy, never encountering pain or hardships. Now imagine your space ship accidentally crashed on their planet and you were stuck there for the rest of your life. At first, it might all seem peachy. But over time...how would you relate to these people who know nothing of the suffering of life?

The point is: We earth types share a common bond. We can each relate to the need to complain about the hard day at work, or pine over the love lost, or ache from grief at the death of a loved one. It's part of the human condition to suffer and, in some way, we feed off of it, in ourselves and with each other. It's an integral part of the life force. But our relationship to it is what has become skewed.

Next time something is making you suffer...imagine yourself on that planet, with no one there to relate to your pain. No one who is capable of listening with empathy or sympathy. No one else who is experiencing any suffering but you...

Ironically, this condition that we all have in common, human suffering, is also the condition that so often tears us apart and alienates us from one another. The commonality that should help us relate to one another, instead often manifests as an oppositional force that divides.

We are all in this together. And that bond is much richer than we realize.