What? Your life is not perfect? Your friendships and romantic interests sometimes become strained and they occasionally fall apart completely? Does your aging house need many types of maintenance and repair work? Are you concerned about your finances? Is your body failing in minor and major ways as you age? Do your digital devices often need new trouble-shooting, upgrades and passwords? Are the people you care about the most so worried about these same things that these worries and struggles are the topics that dominate your conversations?

No one ever promised us that our lives would be lived happily ever after. We have no right to believe that we would never be required to work hard to maintain our physical and social environments. These daily unrelenting challenges should actually be seen as opportunities because these “burdens” are not distractions from our lives. These “burdens” are the essence of Life. As Sam Harris notes in his thought experiment below, if you take away all the things that make our lives irritating, exhausting and scary, nothing of value remains.