We live in a miserable world because we are miserable
“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.” says Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love.
We live in a miserable world because we are miserable. We are the world and the misery is our own fiction, our own creation. Of course, there’s a fact of misery—the natural disasters, the widespread poverty etc. There is always something to do about it. But there’s another misery, deeper misery, which is purely psychological. Our mind is responsible for it. It creates misery for itself and is busy creating for others–knowingly or unknowingly. It is a habit. We are slave to it. The 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote:“Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”