Random thoughts on a social media post

 Saw a random status today. One of those “pain leads to success” things people keep posting. Usually I scroll past, but this one made me stop. Not because it was profound, but because it felt wrong.

It said: “Every successful person has a painful story. Every painful story has a successful ending. Accept the pain and get ready for success.” Sounds nice, but it assumes pain is proportional to success. If that were true, someone dying in constant pain from cancer, or someone who lost everything in a landslide but survived, would be the most successful people alive. That is clearly not reality. Plenty of people suffer with no “success” at the end, and plenty succeed without great pain.

It reminded me of Dickinson’s line: “Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all.” Read alone, it feels comforting. Put it next to Nietzsche’s “Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man” and it turns into something else entirely. The bird is no longer a companion. It is an alarm you can never turn off. Anything eternal, even love, eventually becomes torture. Without contrast or an end, meaning fades.

Life is short. That is what makes it meaningful. Fill it with eternal hope and you end up in stasis, always waiting for something better that never comes. The problem is that “better” itself is a trap. Wanting more is what makes us think what we have now is not enough. As the Buddha said, craving is the root of suffering. Desire drives progress, but it also creates misery.

As Krishna told, “You have the right to perform your duty, but not to the fruits of your actions.” Act, but do not cling to results. That way you avoid the torment of endless hope and the poison of craving, and still live fully in the short time you have.