Better Ways

Of course, suffering is a bad way of waking up. There are much better ways: compassion, work, love, music, altruism, knowledge. But suffering is the default way.

And of course, suffering doesn't necessarily go away even when you do wake up. But once you have woken up you have a much better chance of not actually being the cause of the suffering yourself.

The most difficult question is why innocent, conscious, children should suffer. Their suffering may be from some natural disaster not of human making. If there were no hazards there would be no parenthood and no heroism. The dangers are real dangers.

But there is survival. What real harm does drama do, if you still exist at the end? There is a lot of evidence that we do still exist at the end.