The Parallel Universe
If you find this universe unsatisfactory you can always teleport to a parallel universe.
Here is a rough account of life as we experience it, without any fanciful embellishments. Generally speaking, we go to work to earn money, and wouldn’t bother unless we were forced through economic necessity. The boss might be a bully, your peers secretly sabotaging your efforts to get a promotion, an arduous commute, exhaustion by the end of the day. Family life is typically not much better. Bastard parents that projected the things they refused to see in themselves onto you - you ugly, inadequate thing. A partner that hates you maybe, and possibly kids that hate you too. Siblings that consider you to be the runt of the family, treating you with complete contempt. Maybe poor health that impacts your ability to earn a reasonable salary. Financial hardship and distress. Anxiety, depression, worry, fears. Questions about the point of it all. Deep denial on the topic of death. Superficial socializing that is boring and painful as “friends” boast and seek to take the higher ground.
Of course, not all these things will afflict a given individual, but many will, and possibly more. But fear not, the parallel universe is here to help. In the parallel universe, none of the above-mentioned difficulties is even considered. In the parallel universe, all we need do is meditate, pray, chant, burn incense, read sacred texts, be mindful, exercise loving-kindness and say namaste. Your life of pain will be magically transformed into one of peace and pleasure. Such is the marketing of the parallel universe, offering goodies such as enlightenment, moksha, self-realization, salvation, and even greater success in life. The painful life that many people live means they are attracted to promises of this nature. Pictures of slim young beautiful things meditating in a forest or on a cliff overlooking the ocean appeal to us because we would like to leave our chaotic, crowded, hurried, unsatisfactory life and become like one of these blessed ones.
I'm assuming here that my readers have seen enough of life to know that it will always be a messy, painful, and at times an ugly affair and that promises of a spiritual escape are nothing more than the creations of the marketing departments in the various "spiritual" corporations that are part of a multi-billion dollar industry. Unfortunately, the parallel universe that these wicked people promote and sell is convincing enough that millions of people will part with their hard-earned cash in an attempt to transition from this messy existence to the parallel universe where everything is okay.
So, let's assume that no one reading this believes in these parallel universes. The way to deal with this universe is to fully accept what is happening with the absolute minimum of resistance. In this way, we get less tangled up in the chaos and pain around us and may at times feel like we are in the eye of a storm instead of being mashed up by it. But of course, this requires a certain amount of work on the part of the person who might pursue this path, and it will not be so attractive to the majority of people wanting instant teleporting to the parallel universe; and in any case, we stay firmly rooted in this universe, and who the hell wants that.