I must have been about eight years old when I first became aware of myself questioning the nature of suffering. By then, I had already seen the pain people I loved could endure through relationships, disappointments and the events in their lives. I was too young to understand all the reasons for it, but I understood the distress.
I remember becoming aware of a quiet yet insistent thought: Why can’t people just be happy? Surely there must be another way.
I never mentioned my questions to anyone. Eight-year-olds do not usually make those kinds of observations and do not expect to be taken seriously. I had no idea how to deal with the thought.
Then, when I was in my mid-teens, something happened that changed my perspective. I arrived home one day, happy and laughing about something I can no longer remember. A visiting relative looked at me and said, “Oh no, you look happy.”
I thought he was joking. He was not. What followed was a very clear explanation of why happiness was naïve: life was not meant to make us happy; I was fooling myself if I thought otherwise, and I would eventually discover it for myself.
I remember taking it seriously. He spoke with such certainty that I concluded I must be wrong. My childhood belief that there had to be another way was naïve. So, quite consciously, I stopped pursuing the question.
For years, I did not think about it again. But the question itself had not gone away. When I eventually became curious again about why we suffer, why we repeat patterns, and whether we can experience life differently, I found myself back where I had started:
Surely there must be another way.
Mistaking Long-Held Feelings for Who We Are
Many of us have moments when we question something we have taken for granted for years. Does it have to be this way? Why do I keep feeling like this? Is this really who I am? The question may only be there for a moment, and it is easy to ignore it and carry on as before.
For me, the question was not only about the suffering I could see around me. Despite moments of happiness, I was often unhappy, though when I was younger I could not have explained why. As I grew older, anxiety and sadness became so familiar that I continued to believe my relative was right, and I stopped questioning those feelings. I assumed they were part of who I was.
This is easy to do. If we have felt anxious, unhappy or dissatisfied for long enough, we can start to treat these feelings as part of our personality rather than as something to challenge.
Fortunately, the question I had asked as a child stayed with me, because somewhere beneath it was another possibility: things didn’t have to remain as they were.
How One Question Changed My Anxiety
I was anxious right up until my early thirties. I bit my nails; my foot tapped whenever I was uncomfortable. I had never questioned any of it; it was just an inescapable part of me. Then one day, without quite meaning to, I asked: Why do I feel this way? For the first time, instead of simply experiencing daily anxiety, I looked at it. I saw it as an entity in its own right.
Self-inquiry had never occurred to me before, and that small, honest question set something in motion. I was a voracious reader (hundreds of novels, mostly for escapism), so the library was already my second home. Soon after asking, I found myself drawn to the psychology section, where I picked up a little book on anxiety. It introduced me to simple ideas and exercises, and over the following months the constant dread and physical habits fell away. I stopped biting my nails. I still feel anxious at times, but it has stopped being a permanent condition and has become an ordinary reaction to particular things.
At the time, it felt like a miracle. Looking back, what mattered was that I could apply the exercises to other aspects of my life. I had asked myself an honest question, taken one small step, and changed something I had assumed was part of me. For the first time, I realised I could look at what I was feeling rather than accept it. I didn’t have the language for it then, but that was my first real exploration of Self-Awareness and the beginning of learning to listen to the quieter part of myself I now call my Higher Self.
You Don’t Need an Extraordinary Life to Change
I have lived what many would call an ordinary life. I was born in the North East of England to working-class parents, the youngest of five children. Money was short, and poverty was my everyday reality for years.
I married young, which I realised later helped me escape an unhappy childhood. During those years, I found myself, on autopilot, recreating the sadness I had known all my life.
I have spent my working life in ordinary jobs, learning these lessons slowly, in real and often difficult circumstances. The question came at eight, the first real inquiry in my early thirties, and I didn’t begin the search in earnest until I turned forty.
The details do not matter; the ordinariness does. If peace of mind required a monastery, a windfall, or a special gift, most of us would be disqualified before we even began. An ordinary life is not an obstacle to this journey. It is the classroom; every challenge, every setback, and every difficult relationship is part of the curriculum.
The Difference Between Pain and Suffering
As a child, I thought the depth of my pain was unique to me. As I grew older, I realised it was not. Everyone carries pain, whether or not others can see it. We all suffer at times.
What changed things for me was coming to understand that pain and suffering are not always the same. Pain is part of life. Suffering often stems from how we think about pain, what we believe it means, and the stories we build around it. I began to see another way of looking at what was happening. It did not change the facts, but it changed how I responded to them.
Over time, that perspective brought more peace, hope and joy to my life. This series grew out of that experience, alongside years of reading, questioning, testing ideas and seeing what actually helped.
It has not been written because my life is remarkable. It is not. I have written it because what I learned made a real difference to me, and parts of it may be useful to you too, even if your life is very different from mine.
“An ordinary life is not an obstacle to this journey. It is the classroom.”
Try This: Find Your Question
Think about something in your life that keeps bothering you, or something you have quietly accepted for a long time without questioning it.
What question underlies it?
It might be: Does it have to be this way? Why do I keep feeling like this? Why does this keep happening? Is this really what I want?
Write the question down exactly as it comes. Don’t try to answer it yet. Just notice what you are asking. Sometimes the most useful place to begin is to admit the question is there.
That question is the thread. The whole journey is what happens when you pull it. You may have explored healing or personal growth teachings, and nothing lasted. That isn’t because you failed. It’s because self-improvement was never quite the right tool for the job. That’s where we’re going next, when we consider that personal growth isn’t enough.
Articles in The Journey
Living From Your Higher Self: The Journey to Your True Self; Introduction
- The Question That Changed My Life
- Why Personal Growth Isn’t Enough
- Your Teachers Are Closer Than You Think
- The Road Ahead: What to Expect When You Begin
- What’s Waiting on the Other Side? Discovering the Peace You Already Carry
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