Daily life is dukkha When I wake in the morning I have noticed that in that first moment when I realise I am conscious I feel this kind of yuckiness or sinking feeling. I'm not sure quite how to describe it. I guess it's dukkha? It's a daily realisation about where I am and the effort and discomfort that entails.  I don't want to face the daily struggle to survive life.  When I'm on retreat I wake up fresh and light with a sense of joyous wonder about what is ahead. I am completely different person. The person I want to be. I suppose retreat isn't really reality. It's like a bubble frozen in time, buffered from external stress.   But I want to feel like this in my daily life. I want to wake up and feel like I'm glad to be alive but I don't. I feel more like a slave or a pawn trapped in a shitty capitalist system, being used to prop up the greedy and powerful. I don't feel free in any way. I feel weighed down.  what advice can you give me about this? Do I need to try and change how I'm seeing things and if so how?  How do I have more of the energised joyous wonder??
The main principle of happiness and freedom, especially emphasized in Mahayana Buddhism, is unselfishness:

(1) We feel concerns about ourselves, and about various conditions which also focus into ourselves.

These concerns are created by fixations on good and bad - as they exist from our point of view.

For example, I see the modern human world as cruel, unjust, full of stupidity, destroying the life on Earth, doomed.

But that view comes from my particular perspective. If I take into account that in the past millions of people in Europe died from plague and famine, and many were burned alive for their views, I could understand that some progress actually happened.

We can conduct an experiment: think about the same ugly things when we are in a good mood. Then probably negative thoughts would not stay for so long, they would not occupy our mind.

That experiment shows that habitual thoughts accompany our emotional state. In an easy state we would have more optimistic view on the same problems.

Therefore,

(2) We can drop our self-centered concerns, and shift our attention to caring about others.

You might say it looks like too simple idea to really work well, but then let me ask: have you tried?

Mahayana has thoroughly developed system, called the way of perfections (paramitas). Most often we speak about Six paramitas (they are the main core of the path).


Giving selflessly drops our egoistic burden. Every time we give without egoistic concerns, we return a step back to our original unconstrained and natural feeling.
Discipline means to keep our wholeness despite habits and distractions which try to carry us away from our natural heart.
Patience is an art of remaining relaxed. We have habits to be dissatisfied, to rush somewhere else rather than to be just here. Patience means we want to live every moment in complete wholesome manner. Not wasting our life in chasing feverish desires, not escaping this moment to self-compressed heat of constraint.
Enthusiasm comes from understanding that if we remain passive then our energy dissipates, and we live in dull, gray world.
Concentration is all the previous perfections together:


Selflessness.
Wholeness.
Relaxed presence.
Energy of joyful deeds.



Moreover, concentration means gathering of all our abilities, experience and knowledge, all our skills and open vision in the focus of being completely now.

It means we are able to control our mind, because it's not scattered; distractions can't catch it so easily.

Finally,


Wisdom.


It means prajna - the ability to see everything as it is. It guides our practice of all the other five paramitas. And these five paramitas in turn create open, clean mind, which means the mind of wisdom.

That way we actually drop oppositions and concerns. We have no burden anymore. We naturally are doing something to make the world more beautifil, but we definitely understand that doing that we don't need to make ourselves suffer.



PS. Several practical tips

1. Take the responsibility

Ordinary attitude is: "The world is so bad that my life is in misery, and I can't do anything about it".

Better attitude is: "Whatever be the world, I wish to use my life for the benefit of all beings".

Reasoning:

Letting conditions make me waste my life has no sense. So regardless of conditions I decide to use my life wisely.

With that in mind, make a resolution to be responsible for your life and death by yourself, not letting adverse conditions make you useless.

2. Drop inner oppositions

Ordinary attitude is: "I should force myself to be a decent, effective person".

Better attitude is: "Whatever qualities I manifest, it's a resource and a field of exploration".

Reasoning:

Trying to force themselves, people divide in themselves, try to manipulate with themselves and act against themselves. That leads to wasting efforts in struggles and creating inner resistance to our own endeavors.

With that in mind, you decide to accept whatever manifests in your mental continuum as a resource and a field of exploration - not struggling with that, but dissolving oppositions.



These two decisions can transfer you from a position of a victim to a function of explorer and scientist who studies how to improve human life for the benefit of all sentient beings.