The disadvantage you know

Things can seem pretty difficult at times. I'm worried about money, or my work isn't going well, or I'm just in a bad mood. I think what life must be like for people who don't have these problems, and I feel envious of that. How easy it must be to be wealthy, happy and successful! Perhaps you are immediately jumping to say "but everyone has problems!" Yes, perhaps. But is it so difficult to accept that for some people life is just better than it is for you? Is it so impossible that there is someone out there who, for no good reason, has your life plus a little bit more?

I think the more interesting response is to ask: how weak is your imagination that the only kind of better you picture is you plus a million dollars? What about you plus a thousand limbs? Plus a brain the size of a planet? What about you plus a galaxy of robot servants capable of rendering a creation so expansive that the sum of today's humanity couldn't even comprehend it? What about your mind modified to be in a state of pure, absolute bliss without beginning or end?

It seems evident in these moments that there is so much – infinitely much – that we don't have. That we will never have. And yet the thought that I may never rule the universe or transcend time and space itself doesn't really bother me on a day-to-day basis. And if that doesn't bother me, perhaps there is no reason to be bothered that my life isn't better in other ways either.