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tefkahlast Friday at 5:09 PM3 repliesview on HN

What perspective change? Your brains splattered on the wall? While I am also grateful to be alive, I don't think it's that hard to imagine other people being in situations where they feel deeply unhappy about being born, and that that feeling really can't be dispelled with a simple "perspective change", unless you mean suicide.


Replies

monktastic1last Friday at 5:36 PM

I think you're misreading the comment you're responding to. Its parent comment said that life can be a blessing or a curse depending on how you choose to look. They responded by asking whether the word "curse" is appropriate if it can be changed based only on perspective.

avenseclast Friday at 5:37 PM

I read the comment with a bit more grace. I just assumed they were skipping to the end of a journey without any of the subject's empathetic nuance. Meaning, most philosophical, spiritual, psychological, and mindset approaches all "end" with the idea that we have a choice in how we feel about things. That choice is choosing to feel things differently.

Those ends would say that suffering is a product of our own making. It is a choice. Bad things can happen to you, but your perspective on the situation creates the suffering (resistance, guilt, personalization, inability to see it as a change agent, etc.).

scotty79last Friday at 5:34 PM

It doesn't even need to be situations, just a particular flavor of brain chemistry.