I’ve written before about how we are instant-gratification, pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding monkeys. We are primates, and our nervous system (including our brain) is fundamentally wired to seek out what is pleasurable and to avoid what is painful. These operating instructions evolved to keep us alive and reproducing in an uncertain and sometimes hostile environment, and in that context, they work well. The problem is that survival is not the same thing as happiness. In our modern environment, these same instructions often create unnecessary suffering.
If we are constantly trying to find pleasure and avoid pain, we are destined to fail. Suffering is an inescapable part of the human condition. Every human being experiences loss, disappointment, illness, and emotional pain. A nervous system designed to avoid suffering at all costs is therefore operating under an impossible mandate. It cannot succeed, yet it never stops trying.
Further, no one lives a life of uninterrupted pleasure. Even when we find something pleasurable, it is fleeting. No experience lasts. But the nervous system does not adapt to this reality. As soon as one pleasure ends, the search for the next begins. We are left chasing a moving target, unable to arrive at lasting satisfaction.
From an evolutionary perspective, this is not a flaw. The nervous system exists to help us survive and reproduce, not to provide enduring happiness or freedom from suffering. For modern humans—who care deeply about meaning, fulfillment, and well-being—this creates a fundamental challenge. We are using ancient wiring to pursue goals it was never designed to achieve.
So what do we do in light of our biology? First, we have to accept that suffering is an inherent part of life. There is no getting away from it. Suffering is not a moral failure or a personal flaw, but a basic feature of existence. Birth, aging, illness, loss, and death are not exceptions; they are the rule. But there is irony in that the path to less suffering begins with accepting its presence.
Much of our suffering comes not from pain itself, but from our craving that things be otherwise. Our nervous system’s relentless seeking of pleasure and avoidance of pain drives this craving. We grasp at what feels good, resist what feels bad, and assume—often unconsciously—that our well-being depends on keeping this balance tipped in our favor.
If suffering arises from craving and resistance, then changing our relationship to desire, aversion, and discomfort changes our experience of life. This does not require that we stop feeling pleasure or pain; it requires that we stop organizing our lives around their constant pursuit or avoidance. Pain is unavoidable. Suffering is what happens when we resist pain, argue with it, or demand that it not be there. That resistance often hurts more than the original experience.
This does not mean resignation to the difficulty of life, but willingness. Accepting and embracing discomfort paradoxically alters our relationship to it, lessening it making it somehow seem less weighty. When we allow discomfort to be present without immediately trying to escape it, it changes. It becomes less rigid, less threatening, and less personal. We often discover that what we were fighting was not the sensation itself, but the story we were telling about it.
This is why I practice and teach meditation. Meditation trains us to notice our response to thoughts and emotions as events rather than commands. We can learn to pay attention to what is happening– both around us and inside us– without immediately obeying the inherent command of our nervous system to seek out pleasure and avoid pain. Over time, we learn that we can experience discomfort without being consumed by it. We can feel pleasure without grasping it. The nervous system still fires, but we are no longer entirely at its mercy.
It is no great insight to state that everything changes, and that impermanence is the nature of reality. Pleasant experiences end, unpleasant experiences shift, and even our sense of self is in constant motion. Our nervous system, however, behaves as if permanence were possible. It keeps reaching for pleasure as though the next experience might finally last.
This is a miscalculation. We assume that if we assemble the right sequence of experiences—enough comfort, pleasure, recognition, and control—we will arrive at a stable state of satisfaction. When pleasure fades, the nervous system responds as though this is a problem to solve rather than a fact of life, intensifying desire and restarting the cycle. Over time, this becomes exhausting, even when life is objectively going well.
We cannot override biology through willpower. Instead, we have to treat the nervous system as something to be understood and trained. Patterns of attention and reaction strengthen with practice and repetition. Most of us have spent years practicing distraction, avoidance, and craving. We can practice different skills—presence, patience, and curiosity—with the same consistency.
As this training takes hold, a new possibility emerges. We still experience pleasure and pain, but they no longer dictate our behavior or define our well-being. The nervous system keeps doing what it evolved to do, but we stop confusing its signals with truth. When we encounter pleasure, we don’t need to grasp it but can just say, “Hi.” Similarly, when we encounter difficulty, we do not need to run away from it or change it, but can just say “oh, hello.” That shift is the beginning of freedom.
Love,
Doc
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