Rohan at a learning a day shared an interesting quote from Alan Watts:

“This, then, is the human problem: there is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain. By remembering the past we can plan for the future. But the ability to plan for the future is offset by the ‘ability’ to dread pain and to fear of the unknown. Furthermore, the growth of an acute sense of the past and future gives us a corresponding dim sense of the present. In other words, we seem to reach a point where the advantages of being conscious are outweighed by its disadvantages, where extreme sensitivity makes us unadaptable.”

There is much in it.

One of the many things is the idea that a medal always has two faces. One never goes without the other. Both together describe polarities.

Pleasure involves pain. Neither of both lasts forever and going away from one increases the other.

Past creates future. Future morphs into past. Past experiences impact how we create new experiences. And new experiences shape how we assess past experiences.

Present is future to past and past to future. It’s the only moment we can experience. Past and future are ideas in the mind.

Another takeaway from this quote is, that there is a point from where it becomes intense emotional labor to develop more consciousness.