Suffering for Sake of Suffering

Metaphorical Narrative

You see a worker digging a hole in dry soil. They’re exhausted, covered in dust, but they refuse to stop. There’s no gold, no water, nothing left. The act of suffering has become the prize. Pain itself has turned into the shovel.

Core Insight

The mind sometimes treats suffering as currency — as if the more you endure, the more worth you earn. But this creates a closed loop: the struggle becomes proof of value, even when it creates nothing. Without interruption, you keep digging empty ground.

Saturday Experiment

Choose one task today and give yourself explicit permission to stop halfway. Call it complete. Let the body feel that nothing collapsed — the world kept going.

Sunday Reflection

In third person: “They noticed that ending a task early didn’t betray them. It freed them.”