Every adversity is an opportunity to learn, so giving up is not the answer

A new UK research has found that people can die simply because they’ve given up, life has even beaten them and they feel defeat is inescapable. The study is the first to describe the clinical markers for “give-up-itis”, a term used to describe what is known medically as psychogenic death. Although not akin to depression, the act of giving up on life and dying usually within days is a very real condition, which usually follows a trauma from which a person thinks there is no escape, making death seem like the only rational outcome.

The five stages of ‘give-up-itis’ are social withdrawal, apathy, aboulia (severe lack of motivation), psychic akinesia (profound apathy) and psychogenic death. This outlook may be due to a change in a frontal-subcortical circuit of brain, which governs how a person maintains goal-directed behavior.

According to Hinduism, the very fact we are born means that in our last life, we did not get “Moksha” or liberation. It also means that some sufferings in our last birth remained, which have to be faced now. So, when the purpose of our life is to face sufferings, why agonize over them?

Buddhism believes that suffering exists, that there is a reason for every suffering and that it is possible to neutralize suffering by understanding the 8-fold path (Right view, Right intention, Right speech, Right action, Right livelihood, Right effort, Right mindfulness and Right concentration) to end suffering (the four Noble Truths).

People today get dejected by the smallest of sufferings. Giving up is not the answer. It is important to be self-motivated. Remember that in every ‘dukh’ you think of ‘sukh’ and in every ‘sukh’ you think of a ‘dukh’. Positive thinking produces nearly a 30% drop in perception of pain.

Just as photon is the smallest unit of light and quantum is the smallest unit of energy, Qualia is the smallest unit of thought. Quantum teleportation is the transportation of quantum information via the phenomenon of entanglement. At the level of quantum, consciousness is the extreme parasympathetic state of mind or Samadhi.

Next time you have a problem, think differently and learn to enjoy them. Learn to disassociate from, both, external pain as well as pleasure and only then can one acquire true internal happiness. As per Vedic literature, every adversity is an opportunity to learn or to do something different, so giving up is not the answer.