What I think I've found
It's big good news to me that we are better advised to not crave delightful things, nor hate abhorrent things. What transcends these, they say, is cultivating a detached state of equanimity, realising that all pleasant and unpleasant things will pass, and abiding in a permanently available state of consciousness that is unaffected by craving nor hatred. In other words, it's good news that happiness is not permanent; one can make inferential inroads from this fact.
My upbringing, my neurodiviersity, my culture... all conspired to make me believe that I should always have something to look forward to, be happy about, strive for, fight for/against, worry about gaining or losing, etc. This describes a pretty constant state of suffering, never settled nor satisfied, seeking and not finding.
All this also failed spectacularly to inform me with any credible stories, myths, legends etc. of how it is we are here; how birth and death work; what it may be to be unborn and undying; what happens when loved ones die; how the individual relates to the planet and the cosmos; whether individuality is as much an illusion as reality is; and so on.
Not until my second cancer and its continuation over the last 6 years, did I begin to dismantle this ready-made idea that life should be a certain way. What seemed so solid, is arguably hollow and void; just a label, a descriptor, while conditions last. The self-identity of “I”, “me”, “mine” is reportedly as faulty as can be. The same goes for that table over there... see Lama Zopa Rinpoche: How Things Exist (Teachings on Emptiness), p.44 “How a Table Exists”.
The avoidance of identifying with a separately existing self, appears to offer multiple panaceas. Namely, if I don't really exist as I thought and was taught, then who is there to get upset, be offended, live or die? This seems to me to be how some masters are able to endure dentistry without anaesthesia, insult without hurt, genocide without retaliation, death without fear.
It's approaching superhuman, but then why shouldn't we.