Simply by living we tally discomforts and deferred fears - many small and some huge; often compounding into heavy weights we are forced to confront.
I have been circling: how much burden are we willing to bear?
Act now or rearrange our lives around the pain?
Where does physical end and mental begin? And when does the anticipation of future suffering become the decisive factor for action?
In the absence of a clear physical limitation, the heavy lifting is often mental: the narratives we tell ourselves about what could happen, and the acceptable cost of avoiding that imagined future. Our minds architect chaos and then force us to live amidst it.
Mundane example: my knee
I had a benign cyst below my kneecap that created a low-level, persistent unease. It didn’t stop me from living, but it was there. I opted for surgery last year mainly because I feared future deterioration.
Why should I wait for it to get worse before acting?
The operation traded one suffering for another: the acute healing pain in the first month, the deadness of my leg around the scar, and a new gingerly way of moving about. All, hopefully temporary new restrictions, otherwise what was the point of it all?
That is the paradox: we substitute one pain for another. And sometimes we rid ourselves of the psychological dread that had been controlling us.
We seek environments, tools, and solutions today to negotiate the set of burdens we will tolerate tomorrow. Consider social selection.
People choose:
Neighborhoods;
Professions and;
Communities … because the psychological cost of being in places misaligned with our values can be unbearable. Let’s take gun ownership as a case study in this dynamic. I don’t believe most gun owners often use guns; certainly not against home invaders. Yet, owning a gun serves as an instrument against a social scenario they cannot stomach.
The burden we bear is a fear of being attacked and perhaps a need to defend ourselves against a perceived threat. When the perceived risk - fueled by social narratives - exceeds tolerance, we act by moving to a different village, engaging with a new social circle … or buying a gun.
These are attempts at rearranging life to avoid a future pain we hope to mitigate.
But are we simply substituting one pain for another?
Post-surgery, I have a “it’s not the same” pain. But my mental accounting has shifted. The “what if it gets worse?” question is gone. This has allowed me to recalibrate risk and reward. It’s not precise and unfortunately not guaranteed. However, it’s gotten me to think about conflating resolution with substitution.
Substitution creates new beasts of burden. I’m not sure whether it matters how painful they may or may not be as long as they are bearable.
Choosing to no longer bear certain burdens is liberating for us and disorienting for some people around us. People who once accommodated (or complained about) your tolerances must recalibrate; expectations change. When a partner cannot or will not share the same burden, the mismatch forces us to reshape life alone or compromise indefinitely.
I’ve been reading about stoicism but I think this is more about an ethics of selection.
We can change our environment.
We can exercise agency.
And when we can’t then it’s our responsibility to manage friction with grace.
From a financial lens, similarly minded investors sync up on their enterprise valuations - “Great vest, I have one just like it!” It makes sense to be around people who share your valuation - especially that of yourself.
Every deliberate choice is a small surgery, substituting one narrative of pain for another reality. Which burdens do we refuse to bear and how might we re-design our lives to be enjoyable not just bearable?
Music: Soon by Blackmagic and Tems
