Acharya Prashant addresses the difficulty of remaining calm during suffering by explaining that the root cause is our ingrained belief in a utopian, suffering-free life. We have been taught to hold a utopian image of a life without suffering, a heavenly bed of roses. This belief, often reinforced by cultural narratives like movies where characters live "happily ever after," becomes a possibility we hold for ourselves. When our actual life, which is full of suffering, does not match this imagined utopia, it leads to immense frustration. The comparison between our reality and this fanciful world is what makes us feel so agitated. He clarifies that suffering in itself is not the primary source of our great sorrow or frustration. Instead, it is the state of suffering compared with the imagined utopian heaven that makes us frustrated. The comparison is the real issue. To address this, one must see that the idea of a perfect, blissful life is purely imaginary. Suffering is an inevitable and ineluctable fact of life; we are born in suffering, we live in suffering, and death is a suffering. Therefore, one should stop imagining a life without suffering, because the more one imagines such a life, the more one suffers. This imagination, intended to minimize suffering, only aggravates it. Acharya Prashant advises to do away with the hope of reaching a fabled land where everything is perfect. This hope is self-defeating and destructive. The correct approach is to take life as it is and then do your best to raise it as much as possible. He redefines excellence, stating that it does not lie in reaching a non-existent perfect state. There is no absolute best place or endpoint of perfection to which one can raise their life. Excellence lies in the act of doing your best to raise your current state. When you are doing your best, a strange, almost miraculous thing happens: you tend to forget the distance you've covered or the measure of success you've obtained. The considerations of comparison become meaningless because you have already done the utmost possible for you. This, he concludes, is the best way to live.
