So this is about suffering. And, more specifically, about my relationship to suffering, which has historically been one of avoidance, and which, paradoxically, has caused more suffering. Because that’s how suffering works, right? Like, it’s never the thing itself, the knife’s edge of pain, but the shadow it casts on the walls of your mind before it even arrives. Or, in my case, the frantic scrambling away from it, which, as it turns out, only increases the probability of falling headfirst into it.

For about ten years now, I’ve been doing the mindfulness thing. Which, by the way, is a truly Kafkaesque exercise in self-negation, because the more you try to be mindful, the more you realize that you are, in fact, an absolute trainwreck of compulsive thought loops and self-sabotage, which—fun fact—is actually the opposite of mindfulness. And recently, I’ve been trying to dodge certain conditions—certain existential landmines—that tend to generate negative thoughts. You know, those thoughts. The ones that come on like an unscheduled commercial break in your brain, flashing things like rage and injustice and I could just burn it all down.

This whole suffering-avoidance experiment escalated about a year ago when I quit a perfectly stable, lucrative, socially acceptable job and opened my own clinic. This, of course, introduced an entirely new and bespoke genre of suffering—the kind that comes with financial ruin, psychological disintegration, and a general sense of having made a huge mistake. The kind that withstands Stockdale, Fitzgerald and The Gita.

Meanwhile, my wife—who, to be fair, has every reason to be angry, given the aforementioned financial free fall—has been… less accommodating. Coming home is now a psychological gauntlet. Conversations are booby-trapped. She says things in a way that is so precisely calibrated to dismantle my emotional stability that it could be used in military psy-ops training.

And here’s the kicker: I know I’m supposed to endure this nobly. Like, Stoicism 101, right? Suffering is a training ground for virtue. Except, and this is important, the Stoics never really accounted for the sheer lunacy of domestic microaggressions, like, say, your wife relocating your things at a frequency that suggests a targeted campaign of psychological warfare.

Which brings us to the scrotum incident.

This morning, I got up, paced around the house, thinking about nothing and everything, and then—turn a corner, and there it is. Her laptop. Open. Vulnerable. A perfect canvas for unspeakable revenge. And like a flash of divine inspiration, the thought comes, fully formed, formidable:

I should put my butt cheeks on the keyboard. Maybe even, like, drag my scrotum over the mouse pad a little.

At which point, I am confronted with a very pressing philosophical dilemma, which is essentially: Why is this happening? Like, what is the precise neurological mechanism by which suffering translates into the impulse to teabag an innocent piece of technology?

And here’s the thing—I know that according to all mindfulness doctrines, it’s okay to have this thought. That thoughts are just thoughts. That I don’t have to identify with them. That the thought itself is not an act, just a phantom limb of some deeper, unresolved hurt.

Joseph Goldstein says, It is okay. And I say it to my son, too. It is okay.

And yet.

And yet, the thought exists. And the thought, if examined under the cold fluorescent light of self-inquiry, is really about transmission. About the way pain begets pain. Because the real danger is not the laptop. The real danger is what happens when, instead of an Apple product, the thing absorbing my suffering is a human being, and at its worst, the apple of my eye.

Which is when I realize, or re-realize, the thing I already sort of knew but had refused to articulate:

Maybe it’s okay to be averse to suffering. Maybe avoiding suffering isn’t cowardice. Maybe not being ready to suffer without inflicting suffering is just a sign that I’m still… unfinished.

Because there’s a kind of strength—the Hollywood kind, the John Wick kind—where you become untouchable, bulletproof, impervious to pain. But there’s another kind, a higher-tier, God-mode kind of strength, where you can take the bullet and still extend love to the shooter. And I am nowhere near that level yet.

So instead of executing my gluteal revenge, I close the laptop gently, center it perfectly—because my wife has an almost fascist devotion to symmetry—and gather the scattered papers, placing them back with ceremonial precision.

And when she wakes up and comes in, she doesn’t notice. Not the change. Not the effort. Not the microscopic war I just won against myself.

But the crazy thing is—I don’t mind.

Actually, I’m relieved. Because I don’t want to explain it. Because the explanation would ruin it.

And maybe, on this unremarkable February morning, I have taken an imperceptible, fractional step toward something better.

Maybe this is what self-betterment looks like.

Not the grand cinematic moment where you transcend suffering forever. But the small, secret victories. The unseen acts of restraint. The silent, ridiculous wars waged between yourself and your lesser self.

And, I guess, the laptop lives to see another day.

Feb 9, 2025
Nuns’ Island Apartment.