Why do we need people in our lives?

My spiritual quest is based on suffering, as in I don’t want to suffer so much. I wouldn’t be surprised if most people look for spiritual enlightenment because they want to find a way out of their suffering.

The Buddha said, “Life is suffering”. But why is life suffering? There is the suffering that is life itself – birth, sickness, death. But that’s only a small part of suffering. I’m not questioning that. It’s the human condition that has me stumped. Beyond the suffering of birth, sickness and death, why do we humans suffer?

People tend to believe that animals don’t suffer in this way. I disagree. Pack animals suffer when they are rejected by the pack. They know instinctively that they need to belong. It’s in their DNA.

Could this be the basis of our suffering? I think I’m on to something here. I think that we are pack animals, and that our insanity is that we have lost the ability to identify with our pack. Families don’t form packs anymore. Neighbourhoods seldom do. Nations have quasi-packs, and belonging to something helps a person feel better, to suffer less. But there is always the fear and obsession of rejection because these packs lack solidity and loyalty. You need to acquire all sorts of unnatural behaviours and beliefs to belong to them, like glamour, wealth, beauty ….., being cool ….., being eco-friendly ……, being sexy….., being liberal ….., being conservative …..

Does a wolf have to adopt unnatural behaviours or beliefs to belong to the pack?

It’s so ephemeral for humans, belonging to a pack. The glue that binds a pack together has broken down, lost in childhood and never regained.

I think this is why we suffer, because we have forgotten how to be loyal to our pack, which in the first instance is our family. Some of us follow an ‘enlightened’ practice of detachment so that we don’t need anyone, even to the extent that we tell ourselves that there is something wrong in being needy. We do need each other. It’s in our DNA.

I fell sorry for us, all that suffering. Jesus said, “Love thy neighbour”. I think he saw what was wrong with us. We have forgotten how to love, and love is the glue that binds the pack together.