Think pieces and ideas reporting in major news media can be quite weird. Take the BBC story Misery: the secret to happiness. It's basically just a common-sense admonishment that striving for perfection in relationships will only bring grief. Wow. The idea that this could be news strikes me as weird. But, we live in weird times, and obvious truths and strategies can seem quite out-of-the-ordinary.

But it gets really weird when Buddhism is brought up:

The authors recommend using mindfulness, a Buddhist meditation technique, to help cope with family suffering.

The technique requires individuals to focus on their present thoughts and actions, and is already used by some psychiatrists in the UK.

They say although Buddhism is considered a major religion, the technique is taken from Buddhist psychology which could be useful aside from Buddhism's spiritual beliefs and practices.

I'm tempted to suggest the Buddhist teaching that life is a cycle of pain and death and rebirth amidst pain — in short, Life Is Suffering . . . and that the trick is to get off of this cycle — as apropos here.

Applied to relationships, a parallel wisdom might be: marriage is a cycle of pain and struggle and suffering and the trick is to get off the cycle. Divorce and never remarry.

See? The key to happiness.

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