The-Subtle-Art-of-Not-Giving-a-F-ck-EnglishPDF-Mark-Manson

became sorta-kinda friends.
Suzuki asked Onoda why he had stayed and continued to fight. Onoda
said it was simple: he had been given the order to “never surrender,” so he
stayed. For nearly thirty years he had simply been following an order. Onoda
then asked Suzuki why a “hippie boy” like himself came looking for him.
Suzuki said that he’d left Japan in search of three things: “Lieutenant Onoda,
a panda bear, and the Abominable Snowman, in that order.”
The two men had been brought together under the most curious of
circumstances: two well-intentioned adventurers chasing false visions of
glory, like a real-life Japanese Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, stuck together
in the damp recesses of a Philippine jungle, both imagining themselves
heroes, despite both being alone with nothing, doing nothing. Onoda had
already by then given up most of his life to a phantom war. Suzuki would
give his up too. Having already found Hiroo Onoda and the panda bear, he
would die a few years later in the Himalayas, still in search of the
Abominable Snowman.
Humans often choose to dedicate large portions of their lives to
seemingly useless or destructive causes. On the surface, these causes make no
sense. It’s hard to imagine how Onoda could have been happy on that island
for those thirty years—living off insects and rodents, sleeping in the dirt,
murdering civilians decade after decade. Or why Suzuki trekked off to his
own death, with no money, no companions, and no purpose other than to
chase an imaginary Yeti.
Yet, later in his life, Onoda said he regretted nothing. He claimed that he
was proud of his choices and his time on Lubang. He said that it had been an
honor to devote a sizable portion of his life in service to a nonexistent empire.
Suzuki, had he survived, likely would have said something similar: that he
was doing exactly what he was meant to do, that he regretted nothing.
These men both chose how they wished to suffer. Hiroo Onoda chose to
suffer for loyalty to a dead empire. Suzuki chose to suffer for adventure, no
matter how ill-advised. To both men, their suffering meant something; it
fulfilled some greater cause. And because it meant something, they were able
to endure it, or perhaps even enjoy it.
If suffering is inevitable, if our problems in life are unavoidable, then the
question we should be asking is not “How do I stop suffering?” but “Why am
I suffering—for what purpose?”