‘suffering is a choice’

fear and hope; the root causes. unhappiness, anxiety, grief, and confusion emerge from attention displaced into past-memory and future-anticipation. suffering becomes habitual. an ignorance to shared fears attracts social accusations of stupidity or recklessness. such accusations enforce conformity through emotional influence by those who learned that misery can grant social-power. fear and hope transfer practical agency from the present moment to an indefinitely held future-state [one day, i will] - an emotional ritual of environmental escape and lacking realization of current tasks. practical problems require recognition and intervention, not emotional reenactment.

starving conditioning

fulfillment rests on discovery, engagement, purpose, and enjoyment rather than hardship euphemized as virtue. not a spectacular fight, a silent starvation. the distinction is between removing a problem and repeatedly consuming its emotional warning-signal. pain is addictive; a routine of consuming bad media can be an escape from the numbness of not consuming it. socially, it’s easy to express annoyance to receive recognition. non-suffering is a recurrent daily selection of stimuli and thoughts - cognitive hygiene without invasive mind-viruses, not a single decision or an affirmation awaiting external confirmation. attention and internal mental presence measure it; a negative thought is not suppressed, it is reduced, limiting exposure, interrupting reinforcement.

anticipation reduced to single realization

reliable alert devices eliminate compulsive inspection(seeking anticipatory pain); poorly configured sensors reproduce the slot-machine structure of uncertainty, checking, and intermittent punishment. environment-design reduces attentive strain. same in trading; predefined “take profit”/“stop loss”-orders replace active monitoring with a closing notification, limiting distress to the actual single event of consequence rather than its continuous anticipation.

conclusion

negativity-bias serves threat detection and critical discrimination, not misery. curiosity vs complaint; play and challenge can replace negative experience. restriction of media and activities reduces cognitive disturbance. pragmatic response operates independent of emotional recurrence: problems demand action, regardless whether the affected entity suffers from it, damaging their mental hygiene, or not. “shits are taken, not given.” perception is information which either triggers a destructive mental cascade, or suggests the importance of performing the next action with duty. the same way “an educated mind [is] able to entertain a thought without accepting it” (aristotle), a pragmatic mind is able to process emotionally-loaded perception without suffering from it.