Simon Bolivar one said in the final months of his life, “How will I ever get out of this labyrinth”? Most people interpret the “labyrinth” Bolivar mentions as the labyrinth of suffering in which we all are hopelessly lost in. And so, here is my answer.
Suffering is experienced by people whose fears have been realized. An example is: I fear the death of my father and so I suffer the feeling of loss when he dies. From the smallest worries to the biggest of woes, whether we like it or not, we are sometimes (if not all the time) controlled by out fears, insecurities and uncertainties. The knowledge that out fears will potentially hurt us traps us in the labyrinth with a slim to none chance of finding our way out. We look of ways to avoid our fears, a way to somehow escape them. But this, in fact, is pointless, because sooner or later we will cross paths with out old fears again, and as always, there will be no full-proof escape route. It is a never ending cycle, a never ending network of paths in which we cannot find out way out of.
And so, we go back to the question. How will we ever escape this labyrinth of suffering? The answer is, we never will. The labyrinth is an illusion. There is no way out, there is only conquering our fears one after the other until there are none left. And then the labyrinth of suffering is but a labyrinth once more. But new fears will develop, and soon, we are back to where we began, fighting something that cannot be killed. The labyrinth of suffering is life itself, and there is no way to escape it. There never was.
So, I’d like your answer to one question.
How will you ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?
