It's a gift to exist!

25 December 2023

---

It's a gift to exist! It's a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering. There's no escaping that.

I didn't learn it, that I was grateful for the thing that I most wish hadn't happened. I realised it. It's an oddly guilty feeling. I don't want it to have happened, I want it to not have happened.

If you are grateful for your life, which I think is a positive thing to do - not everybody is, I'm not always, but it's the most positive thing to do - then you have to be grateful for all of it. You can't pick and choose what you're grateful for.

So what do you get from loss? You get awareness of other people's loss, which allows you to connect with that other person, which allows you to love more deeply and to understand what it's like to be a human being. And so, at a young age I suffered something, so that by the time I was in serious relationships in my life, with friends, or with my wife, or, with my children, is that I have some understanding that everybody is suffering. And however imperfectly, acknowledge their suffering, and to connect with them, and to love them in a deep way that not only accepts that all of us suffer, but also then makes you grateful for the fact that you have suffered, so that you can know that about other people.

And that's what I mean. It's about the fullness of your humanity. What's the point of being here and being human if you can't be the most human you can be. And that involves acknowledging and ultimately being grateful for the things that I wished didn't happen.