Suffering is optional.
苦しむか否かは自分次第。
One of my best decisions in my life is to stop reading self-help books that have been published in the last 100 years.
Instead, I go back to the classic books and writings — including the ones written in the era of the Roman Empire. These books tell us that, even thousands years ago, we humans had the similar sufferings as we have now. And that millions of self-help books published recently are not a silver bullet.
In our life, there seems to be always something that we could suffer from. Even though we live in developed countries. But if we consciously see things around us — we will notice that nothing really suffers us. They just exist or appear in front of us, and we just choose to be suffered from them.
We can always live without choosing to be suffered. And that’s the ultimate self-help approach.