> What I'm reacting to is your claim that this is a simple "choice" that everyone else is making:

Just because something is simple, does not mean it is easy.

This has been part of ancient philosophies: “Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.” — Epictetus

But also more recent writings:

* “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ― Viktor E. Frankl (someone who survived the Holocaust)

* “The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.” ― Viktor E. Frankl

* “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” ― Viktor E. Frankl, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning

> So what you're asking of most people is more than a choice (taking their AirPods out), it's more a matter of converting to a different way of life entirely.

Before making the effort to "convert" you first need to choose whether you want to continue to be vexed and frustrated by external events, or if you want to try to reduce your mental anguish by things you cannot control.

Do you want to continue to get pissed off by other drivers, or not? Do you want to get annoyed by other people on the train/bus, or not? Do you want more of an internal calm/peace, or not?

I actually made the decision long before I was ever capable of carrying out the act itself.

I was in a depressive suicidal hole, and had been for well over a decade. The first time I tried to kill my self, I was seven years old.

It began with the realization, while I was trying to drink myself to the courage to finally pull the trigger, that the common refrain "it's all my fault" meant just a bit more than I'd given it credit for.

I realized, huddle on the floor behind my recliner because it was the smallest place I could find and fit in to, that if the desperate quality of my life were truly entirely my own fault, then it could be possible that I could stop being the source of my own malcontent. That was enough to save me from that particular suicidal flare. That I could stop harming myself.

It's been many years from then, and it was many years from there to when I realized that I could even be a source of happiness for myself instead of merely not harming myself.

But it was a choice that I was making, to view myself as inept, beyond salvation, capable of and likely to ruin everything, hater of my fellow mankind, etc. I have found in the years since the last time I tried to kill my self that almost every single unhappiness in my life was a matter of perspective rather than a genuine immutable fact.

Consider the article. People are noisy. Do I have to be upset about that? I certainly used to be bothered by all sorts of rude and noisy people. On the train, at the library, in the grocery, etc. That anger contributed to my general dismay of humanity such that I used to feel that it was all hopeless, and that if everything were hopeless, I shouldn't persist in trying.

That posture was a choice. Choosing to make the effort to no longer adopt that posture was a choice. That I have continued to attempt to make the choice to be compassionate and equanimous towards others is a choice that I have struggled with, and have ultimately both struggled with and succeeded in pursuing.

It's a choice that I have ultimately benefitted from. I cannot possibly see going back to the world in which I elevate my own concerns so highly above others that I simply and outright refuse to observe their own suffering. The world's a bummer, for sure, but for me personally, I am happier observing the problems and contributing to their diminution than I ever was ignoring or pretending the problems didn't exist.

I'm sorry that you think I'm asking anything of anyone, and that you think I've got anything at all adjacent to a religious attitude. Neither could be further from the truth. I am merely sharing my own experience as a contrasting example to the phenomenon described. I know that many people associate certain words with religious activity, but I can assure you that I definitely do not practious any such thing, and would never advise anyone else to do any such thing.

I used to be a person who shut everyone and everything out. I used to do so because I believed that anyone and everything were the source of my suicidal ideation. When I chose to change my beliefs, to believe that perhaps I was the source of my own discontent, was the first moment that I had a glimpse of a future in which I was no longer suicidal.

I just figured this was an opportunity to be like "hey, listening to and talking to people is actually possibly a good thing because it was for me even though I used to think otherwise"