One way to look at the issues deriving from thinking is to consider what its function is.

Plants don’t have central nervous systems, because they do not move intentionally. Mobile organisms have to perceive their environment and decide how to respond to it. So not only are our minds creating sense impressions, but they are constantly sorting and judging them. This is where the problems start. For one thing, good and bad are not some cosmic dual between the forces of righteousness and evil, but the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 of life, from which we evolve, not an ideal to be glorified. There is no more a perfect good, than there is a perfect yes.

The real tension in life is between the multitudes of desires driving us and the need to judge among them. The heart and the head. The anarchy of desire, versus the tyranny of judgement. Youth and age, liberal and conservative.

Consider that galaxies are energy radiating out, as mass coalesces in. We have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, along with a central nervous system sorting through the forms precipitating out. We do not cognitively perceive the energy, but the forms it generates. Otherwise it would be a whiteout, like leaving the shutter on a camera open. Yet these forms are like waves cresting. They are only complete as they are about to start receding. So we only really see what is directly past and it starts to seem fragile and transitory. It is our more emotive senses that can feel the pressure and temperature of the wave start to build. Yet we can’t seem to describe it, since it is not fully formed.

So yes, there is inherent frustration in life, but that’s the breaks. Without the ups and downs, it would just be a flatline. The price we pay to feel is that a lot of it is pain.