We have recently seen a number of huge natural disasters which result in great unhappiness to everyone affected. No one seeks unhappiness, yet it comes into our lives, even though uninvited. There was also a report about how 3 in 5 young girls in the USA are overwhelmed by record levels of persistent sadness. CDC reports that 1 in 3 teenage girls seriously considered suicide in 2021.

The spiritual perspective is that so much pain results from not accepting the reality of the nature of this world and our life in this world.   We have an unfortunate penchant for seeking the eternal, or that which is permanent, in a material and impermanent/temporary place.

The solution is to cultivate a real spiritual life, and by so doing, experience the eternal happiness and love which is part of our eternal spiritual nature, even while residing within the body and within this world.

The misguided materialist does not know that his very body is impermanent and that the attractions of home, land and wealth, which are in relationship to that body, are also temporary. Out of ignorance only, he thinks that everything is permanent.  Bhāgavata Purāṇa 3.30.3

Indeed, a human being should also never desire permanent residence on the earth, for by such absorption in the material body one becomes foolishly negligent of one’s actual self-interest. Bhāgavata Purāṇa 11.20.13