+1. It took meditation to make me realize how much we suffer and react to it without realizing it a such a regular basis. It is so part of the everyday life, and anybody does so: children, adults, old people, rich, poor, healthy, sick, etc. We manage to feel that "conscious existence is too burdensome, uncomfortable, full of anxiety, outright maddening or some combination thereof" in any context, which is a hint that we, as a specie, are part of the problem. And we invent so many ways to distract ourself to avoid feeling it we became masters at it. Some never master it, and instead of hiding the dirt under the carpet, they decide to leave home for good.
I don't think it inherent to the species, just to the way we've organized society. Only the privileged few among us truly get to self-actualize - to become our true selves and leave our marks upon the world before fading into oblivion a scant 8 decades after our arrival.
It is no wonder then that so many find a life of ultimately meaningless toil and distraction so dreadful, and akin to those words by OP.
I think it a great delusion to asscoiate self-actualization with privelege and leaving a mark on the world. It is the grandiose fiction playing out in the minds of many to design that a true self must leave a mark upon "the world". What a dependency. Truth is our brains are complex little machines composed of smaller machines cooperating and at times fighting for the primacy of resources. We exist. Creators create. Let that be enough. Judgment and opinion of our creation is largely beyond us. A person of no privilege can know his existence the same as one of great privilege. The mind is always obscuring reality with its machinery, noisy with the remnants of evolution. See past it friend.
Anything in particular that made you start? I know meditation would be helpful to me, I've known it for years, I just can't seem to bring myself to start for some reason
Curiosity. I asked Buddhist friends if they heard about a technic I could use without the religious part, no mantra, book or shrine since I'm an atheist. There are many of them.
