RE: Psychobabble, Therapy and Woo-Woo: What Do Our Attitudes Say About Us?
Life more often than not is suffering. I find that when I talk about life's woes, it helps me link and bond with other humans more deeply. In my interactions online, people open up more to suffering than happiness. I post cute pictures of my kid and animals on social media but usually comments are short and have no depth. When I talk about suffering however people are more likely to share how they feel the same.
I kind of like your description "suffering with 'Too Many Interests Syndrome'.""I don't take it that you are an unhappy person but a person with lots of knowledge or things that you do. If I were to read that without having read this article my first thoughts would be that I could identify with that person. I could list off all my hundreds of hobbies over the years and interests in response to find something in common.
Someone who suffers only from having too many interests and not terrible suffering might bring joy to someone with interesting and fun things to say which could lessen their readers suffering.
The truism at the heart of Buddhist thought is that "PAIN is not optional, SUFFERING is." Which is what I aspire to, these days... yes, there's a world filled with misery and suffering out there, but I feel decreasing need to make it mine, by proxy.
As it turned out, I changed it from "Suffering from Too Many Interests Syndrome" to "Challenged by Too Many Interests Syndrome," which is really a pretty marginal change but definitely more accurate, as a statement of where I find myself, in my life.
Of course, it is also just a figure of speech... and sometimes it's easy to get wrapped up in making things more serious than they really are.