Why am I full of suffering?

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Acharya Prashant (AP): Why am I so full of angst? I like the way he has used the word ‘angst’ because it conveys that suffering quite forthrightly. There is certain, direct pain contained in this word.

Man is capable of existing as a dumb stone. And a stone experiences no angst, no angst at all. You pick it up, you throw it away, it is alright. You decorate it and make it into a deity, it is alright. And you reduce it into pieces, it is still alright! There is no angst.

The stone experiences no angst. Whatsoever happens with it, is just alright. Then there is the man who is just waking up, just waking up, semiconscious, he experiences suffering. He experiences a lot of suffering.

Poets, writers, and philosophers, literally bleed from their eyes. They really suffer. Then there is this man, who has woken up fully, ‘The Buddha’. He again does not suffer.

Suffering is only in that in-between state of semi-consciousness. ‘I am not fully conscious, I am not a stone, so I am not dead, and I am not a Buddha either, I am somewhere in between. Life is making a sandwich of me.’ All the suffering lies in this in-betweenness. This in-betweenness is about not realizing your potential fully.