Pain and Change: David Richo's Five = 2

The Five Things We Cannot Change....and the Happiness we Find by Embracing Them
by David Richo

1. Everything changes and ends
2. Things do not always go according to plan.
3. Life is not always fair.
4. Pain is part of life.
5. People are not loving and loyal all the time.

Change
Plans
Fair
Pain
Loving and Loyal

Really, there are only two certainties: change and pain, both relating to desire.

The essential nature of the universe is that everything is always changing. Pain arises from that change or our clinging to things and trying to avoid them changing. We want pleasant things to last and never change and we want unpleasant things to change and end immediately.

Things do not always go according to plan because things are always changing--and so the plan must change.

Life is not fair because our lives constantly change in unpredictable and sometimes seemingly cruel or random ways.
Cue the pain. Pain comes from unexpected change. And pain is also just another syntax of life's communication. Pain is a noun and a verb. Life speaks in pleasure and pain, pulling or pushing switches in the binary fabric of our being to get us to see essential truths.

In "Lost" the island speaks to its inhabitants in the mode of carrot and stick: here is your pleasure, here is your pain. Heed my call and recognize your destiny. do my bidding and pleasure this. thwart my plans and pain that.



People are not loving and loyal all the time.
duh.
How could they be. We're all just stumbling through this house of mirrors carnival ride called life. It's all we can do to keep ourselves sane. Taking care of each other sometimes seems like just one more added burden for some people.

And yet its one of the most important things: compassion and kindness.

Not loving and not loyal come from pain and change too.
When people are in pain they sometimes stop being kind, loving, and loyal.
When people are going through change they sometimes experience pain.