Rule 12: Pet A Cat When You Encounter One In The Street

12 Rules For Life Book Summary (Jordan B. Peterson)

This rule is going to discuss the limitation of being, the necessity of suffering and what we can about it.

The idea that life is suffering is a tenant in one form or another of every major religious doctrine. Buddhist stated directly, Christians illustrated with the cross, and Jews commemorate the suffering enjoyed over centuries. Suffering is a component of being. It is the gateway, from my perspective to true excellence in any vocational field. In fact, rather a vocational field, in life, in the vocation of life.

Suffering voluntary or involuntary is a necessity of being. Instead of pushing back against it, like I used to, I now welcome it and relish it. When suffering comes knocking on my door, I tell myself “Amor Fati,” a Latin phrase meaning “the love of fate.” It’s not merely to bear what is necessary, but embrace it and take it on, and face exactly what is in front of you.

And because we live in a culture and society in which most of us in a Western modern world where involuntary suffering and pain is rare because of the stable, economic, geological, environmental state of our countries. Because the involuntary suffering is not present such as went our parents and parents’ parents, great grandparents, for example, had to go through high rates of often child labour. I post about this on my Instagram, if you want to read more about it.

Industrial companies came to poor families and they offered very little money, but they were desperate. So they took it, and children of the ages of as young as six all the way to teenage years, were working factories all day, every day — involuntary suffering. They did what they had to do to survive, to put food on the table, to keep a roof above their head. What do we do? Well, we’ve created good times for ourselves because bad times create hard men, but hard men then create good times and those same men then become weak and create bad times once again. So we have to create voluntary suffering for ourself. And this is something that can be encapsulated through physical endurment, physical activity, whether it’s…