This can be a difficult concept to grasp at first. Essentially, it says that the cause of suffering is being attached to something. Because everything (including us) eventually decays and dies, we’re setting ourselves up to suffer feelings of loss for the rest of our lives. We spend our lives desiring, wanting and aiming for things, only to experience the following:

• It doesn’t live up to expectations (perhaps that new job with more money limits your free time or is too stressful, or the holiday is disappointing)
• The novelty wears off (the new car or partner is great for 12-18 months or so, then you want a change)
• The price is too high (you can no longer afford your home because circumstances have changed, such as marriage break-ups or job losses)
• It causes you problems (the unreliable car, or the child that grows up to be an alcoholic, drug user or a disappointment in other ways, after your high hopes for them)
• It loses its value to you or it breaks (your home gets broken into so that it is no longer a safe haven or you crash the car).

When we’re talking about ourselves and our loved ones we can also add in that they get sick, old and die, but not necessarily in that order.

So we spend our lives chasing things that are ultimately going to disappoint us when one or more of the above things happen. The car, house, job, money, partner, children, etc. will not make us permanently happy as ultimately they will disappoint us, let us down, we’ll lose them, or they’ll become a burden on us. That’s not to say they can’t give us pleasure – of course they do – but they can never give us long-term, permanent, stable peace and happiness. We have to find that from somewhere else, rather than expecting these external things to provide it for us.

So where do we find this elusive peace and happiness? From within ourselves. We need to find the means to be content regardless of what we encounter or have. Then the external objects we so desire can become extra sources of pleasure and joy to increase our happiness, rather than expecting them to be the cause of it. And when we lose them or they no longer provide the pleasure they used to, we don’t get unhappy because our happiness wasn’t dependent on them. Then we can love and treasure them every moment whilst we have them because of the joy they give us, rather than being dependent on them and ultimately suffering when we lose them.

This leads to an acceptance of the way the world is, rather than a continual focus on changing it. The world around us is continually changing and evolving anyway, with people and events coming into our world, affecting us, and then leaving it again. Continually and non-stop – and there’s nothing we can do about it. We can alter our circumstances to make things more comfortable and pleasurable as much as we like, but ultimately it will change beyond our control.

The real cause of all our suffering is not that the world is continually changing and evolving, it’s that we expect it to stay the same and conform to our wishes. That’s never going to happen. But if we accept that everything we desire will ultimately upset us or we’ll lose it, then our attitude to the world will be totally different. We wouldn’t put all our time and energy into chasing external achievements. Instead we would take pleasure in what’s around us and what we have, then let it go when its time has come to depart (whatever or whomever ‘it’ is), knowing that our lives were more joyful and richer for the time we had with it.

As The Serenity Prayer from Christianity says; “Lord, grant me the courage to change the things I can, the strength to cope with the things I can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference.”