Suffering (In Short) Given the circumstance of time, that 1) You cannot know what will happen next, i.e., you can always be wrong about the future, even if you're 'psychic' (It's the nature of the concept of time); and 2) The future decides the past, and present. What something becomes decides what it is, and was. (If something becomes an oak tree, it was an acorn; if it becomes Mozart, it was a human embryo; etc.) . . . What you, or anyone, becomes, decides what you were, and are. Decides what is in your best interests. You do not, and cannot, have a clue as to what is 'vital and necessary,' for yourself or anyone else. Not a clue. Because any such claim is a claim against all future time. Metaphorically, it is a claim against the 'will of God.' Philosophically, it is an unjustifiable, logically unsupportable claim against the future. You can make such claims all you like, but if you do, you will suffer, as human beings suffer. Nothing supports or forces such claims, except vanity, and a failure to understand the nature and significance of time. As Socrates said to his friends, at the beginning of the Western philosophical tradition, after being condemned to death by the Athenian court: 'And so we go our separate ways, you to live, and I to die. And which is better, only God knows.' But we think we know (desperately, erroneously), every moment of our suffocating lives, and suffer. It's really very simple--so simple that only Socrates, apparently, understood. And not perfectly. Until now.