-----------------------------------------------------------------­------------------------------
Assuming that we can only experience time on a linear scale, I believe that suffering and joy can both be broken down into various opposing feelings that reflect our views on the past, present, and future.
These basic feelings are as follows:

        Desire (want for something not currently present) vs
Contentment (acceptance of present circumstances)

        Fear (belief that the future may be worse than the present) vs Hopefulness (belief that the future will be better than the present)

        Lamentment (recalling negative events that have occurred in the past) vs Reminiscence (recalling positive events in the past)

In our current mortal existence, we happen upon a complicated mixture of feelings both good and bad. Many of these are combinations of the six basic feelings. For example, motivation can be explained as the desire to perform a difficult task, along with hopefulness that we'll succeed in performing the task. Likewise, regret can be described as the lamentation of a past event, along with the unfulfillable desire to change the way we had acted.
All of our feelings, in addition to our cumulative worldly experiences, help us define what we call "life".

1/19/17