Yo bro, had been wondering what kinda mood this was written in lol, guess 'cynical' works, but it's heARTy too methinks and anywayz I'm gona have a straigh-faced go. Just my subjective opinion, I'm not claiming to 'know' anything:

How do you answer the following serious questions?

So you've had a pretty hard life, eh? (awww, you poor bugger) Like, WTF? Why would God do such a thing? Ok, so we've eliminated the agency of 'god' in this equation with the first two qualifiers of this article...

Why would you choose such a life?

IMO the question applies to any life, be it one of trauma/suffering or not. If one chooses one's life (and yep, I raised my hand :), then WHY would one choose THIS life and not configure it differently?

Closest is #1 'lessons', but not necc. lessons that fit into the span of a single life. I'd rather go for #7 'Other' and say: to learn, to experience, to grow/expand through understanding one's experience. From a non-form perspective (when 'planning' this particular life), the importance is of gaining experiences which have the potential for learning this or that. The manner/circumstances in which these lessons are learned (or not :) - when seen in human terms, become like/dislike or good/bad as the label is applied. The whole thing about the human experience is that the holographic projection/computer simulation or whatever it is, feels VERY REAL and appears to be all that there is. Maybe not so much that 'everything is fake', but that REALITY itself is not so limited.

So, let's first establish that someone that can give unconditionally and love unconditionally without the need to plan a traumatic existence in order to be like this is a perfect being

The Trauma Olympics eh? :D .......and, sure Monty, but it seems to me as if one of the 'key features' of taking life here and having the Human Experience is the experience of polarity (no armchair travellers man, the Human Experience is to go out into the wilds and discover; appearances almost always deceive in some manner which is why the 'ineffable' can never be demonstrated in WYSIWYG manner to another - must be a self discovery assimilated into experience or else remain in the realm of belief)......so, in non-form I might choose to experience the polarity of being closer to the 'victimiser'/'abuser' in one life and in the next I'd play the 'victim' (to give a crude example). By playing both parts, as it were, I have a much fuller and expanded view/perception of what (for eg) it means to deny choice to another by subjugating and abusing them. Then next time (could be in the same life too) I experience what it's like to be on the other side. What utter richness of experience...right?

But above perspective is only poss if the value judgements are stripped away. That's part of the game itself, but expresses the 'forgetting' that it's a game.

It seems to me that the whole achievement thing, of whatever type, is a rehashing of the same-old stuff that folk have used to convince themselves that they may not need to explore deeper - perhaps into those very traumas that are now used as badges of competition and attack, but if explored with unconditional love for self (clearly this is absent when I'm in competition with another, right?) could perhaps be 'healed' (meaning one is released from whatever 'shadow' is driving one's self-destructive behaviour in this particular regard).

If 'I' am a unique point of expression of the entire fucking universe, one of countless others, as is everyone/thing else, then comparison becomes meaningless for it can only be done between attributes that belong to a 'false' sense of 'self'. In that sense, no, I am not my body to compare penis/boob sizes or depths of scars, in any meaningful manner that reflects anything about 'I'.

'I' express through the body, the temple. 'I' is not better or worse; not above or below; not ahead or behind anyone or anything. Appearances are really tools of learning, and appearances shift all the time. Pain is not avoidable but suffering (wallowing in one's 'pain' or otherwise avoiding dealing with it) is not necc, it seems!

🙏