Running Away from Pain
2 min
Truant
In my first year of high school, I got depressed due to the pressure for studying, and became a proactive truant. “The purpose for X” that was what I was thinking about all the time. From attending school to studying, living, and even the act of thinking itself. I was trying to figure out the why for everything. I ended up with the positive nihilism, and to put it in my own words, the purpose of life is to feel happiness. If something is preventing you from feeling that, you should run away from the obstacle. That realization lifted my depression, and then I transferred to N High School, a famous online high school in Japan. I was inspired by other students there and have done some extracurricular activities. Thanks to the high school’s support for studying abroad, I could join the online Oxford summer program, and eventually got in a community college in the U.S.
Finding
The finding from that experience is quite simple. We sometimes need to make a bold decision to escape from what hurts us. Running away from pain is often perceived as something negative, but we should always look at the big picture. It’s actually the complete opposite of running away from life. Your life is yours, my life is mine.
Initially publised on June 15, 2024. Re-written based on that because an LLM might have been used at some point for translating the whole thing, even though that was revised overtime. Now, it’s following my LLM policy on writing.