The drug abuse, the constant anger, the depression, and panic attacks… all that is the surface. It’s not even the Problem (yes, with a capital P!). These admittedly troubling patterns are the result of months, years, perhaps even decades of trying to come to terms with the Truth.

The trap is this: the expectation that life can be free of suffering, free of worry, free of fear, and free of anxiety. That somehow, somewhere, someone will give you something, tell you something, or teach you something that will just take all those troublesome emotions away, just like in that classic and very sad movie ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’.

Unfortunately, anyone who sells you such a promise is very simply misleading you. It doesn’t matter if the person saying it is a priest, a guru, a philosopher, or even (god forbid!) a therapist – it’s an expectation that will always lead to even further suffering and disappointment.

Life is unfair, and as Chuck Pahlaniuk points out in his glorious book 'Fight Club', "On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero". If there was ever such a thing as a rule of life, that's probably it.

It's clear that who we are to other people and what they think of us plays a huge role in how we view ourselves. It's innevitable, it's hard-wired into us. So it's only natural that we try to portray ourselves as being someone that others will find valuable, based on what we believe other people consider to be valuable.

And here is the trap: before you know it, you are constructing a self and a life whose framework is based almost entirely on who others want you to be.

So it's spring time, and the almond trees are blooming. At the end of the day, we don't hold the fact that they don't bloom all year around against them. We just take it for granted that they have their season, and we give them the care, space and time that they need to get there.

In an almost God-like manner, our brains like to create structure out of almost nothing. If you scribble down two dots with a line below them, you suddenly see a face. This is how keen our perception is to formulate a world around us that makes sense and seems orderly.

On a more abstract level, this is the case with even more complex things. If you have ever watched an odd surreal movie or read an equally strange book, or stood in front of an abstract painting, you probably found yourself wondering 'what on earth did I just experience?', and then began looking deeper. Before you know it, you have an theory that explains the entire movie! And yet if you ask another person, they will have a completely different point of view.

Humanity's search for explanations regarding existence and ultimately a form of meaning which would justify it, is as old as written memory. Our ancestors passed down stories of gods, heroes, and every day people who would defy the odds and perhaps even their idea of divine order, for the benefit of mankind.