Human life is a state of perpetual want/dissatisfaction. This is coupled with/related to an endless ability to accommodate to new “normals”, such that as soon as one want is satisfied, a new baseline is created and a new want takes its place.

I see this perpetual accommodation collide with the realities of aging all the time. As our bodies fail, worse than not meeting our ever increasing wants, we actually are forced to regress to states that are inferior to our baseline. Not surprisingly, humans do NOT adjust to this well which explains the high rates of depression among the elderly.

So really, I can summarize human life as follows:

You are born. If you are lucky, you are healthy and your parents meet your basic needs. This becomes your new baseline.

Then you grow throughout your childhood and teenage years and experience an ever growing series of wants - toys, electronics, cars, friendships, romantic relationships, etc. This becomes your new baseline.

Again, in this best case scenario, you reach adulthood, and the parade of ever increasing wants continues: independence, marriage, job, career advancement, house, family, vacations, etc. Again, this becomes your new baseline.

Then, uh oh, you start getting old or you get sick. Suddenly, all of those assumptions and hard wired systems that continuously moved the goalpost forward get violated.

You start losing function. You start losing independence. You start losing relationships. And it just keeps getting worse as time marches on.

Eventually, a critical malfunction occurs within your body and you cease to exist.

Throughout your lifetime, again in the best case scenario that being human has to offer, you will have experienced no peace, an abundance of dissatisfaction punctuated by only brief, ever fleeting moments of satisfaction, followed by the slow and miserable decline towards your inevitable death.

Put differently, childbirth, to me, is analogous to condemning someone to a life sentence of misery and suffering (with maybe a handful of brief pleasant experiences), followed by a death sentence.

I cannot imagine doing that to another person.

#grownostr

#thinkdangerously

#getoffended

#childfree