Why does starting over (completely) have to be so hard?
Not if you have your memory wiped clean! It’s hard because you remember, and you’re attached to those memories… the way it was when things were good. If you just beamed in from Mars and got installed in your body and brain newly, with the circumstances you have now, and the knowledge you have now, but none of that personal-identity-continuity stuff, you’d not be upset, yes? You’d just do whatever is next to be done, and there would be nothing to compare the current situation with. Unless you’re actually in physical pain from the situation, it just is what it is. But of course we suffer anyway, because we compare what is to what was (or what “should be”). That “gap” between reality and our ideas about what should be is the source of the suffering. So yeah, it has to be hard as long as you hang on to those ideas.
