Why is life so hard?

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Ultimately what makes life hard is that everybody wants different things out of it. If everybody wanted the same thing then life would be really easy, we’d all just keep creating more of what everybody wants and then everybody would be happy.

But no, everybody wants wildly different things, and a lot of times, we have a really difficult time communicating those wants to others. Being able to communicate your wants to others won’t necessarily make them want to help you, but it goes a long way.

Some of our wants are defined by other people not having them. For example, only so many people can have penthouse apartments in NYC. If you somehow made it so everyone could have them, then not as many people would want them. Everyone wants to be ahead of their fellow man. Slaves aspire to be slaveowners, not of a slavery-free society. The response many people have on the surface to economic inequality is that they want society to be equal, but in secret a lot of them really just want to be in the 1%.

All of this makes life hard. Individualism means that there’s just not enough to go around to make everyone happy. So as a result only a few people are happy, everyone else just looks at their neighbor and wants more than he has.