The eye of the storm
Just thinking about how far we as humans go to avoid feeling discomfort & pain. I was watching a movie and the lead heard news she didn’t like and starting screaming for someone to bring her a drink.
How often do we do that in our day to day lives? Maybe it’s alcohol or any other type of substance, maybe it’s screen time, intense exercise, fixating on the things we can control and becoming so rigid in the small details of our lives. Or maybe it’s just shoving all that hurts so far down that you pretend it’s not there.
We can live our lives unconscious and terrified of feeling all that exists beneath our surface like so many of us do. but guess what? living in that place of fear and avoidance might not hurt as bad as feeling all the feelings in the moment - but it’ll hurt longer. It’ll ache as long as you let it. I don’t know about you, but i’d rather sit in the outer ring of a hurricane for a short amount of time than spend my whole life trying to stay in the eye of it - convincing myself i’m “safe” because i’m not in the thick of it.
The amount of brain power & energy it takes to live in a state of avoidance is incredible. And it’s an illusion of control and Okay-ness. Let yourself feel it all. Let the hurricane wash you away for a little bit. Surrender to what it means to be human, which ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes it’s a category 5 storm and you’re scared & hurt and don’t know which what is up or down.
we see it nature & it’s also true for our lives - no storm lasts forever. Ever. Life always finds it’s way back to balance and that hardly ever looks like a neutral emotional setting. We’re up and we’re down. We have peaks and valleys and the beauty exists in all of it. Sure, joy and happiness are great when they arrive but true growth doesn’t often happen there, I don’t think. We grow in the trenches and we enjoy our work in the peaks & then we go back into the trenches to keep learning and growing. And then we enjoy all of that progress & then we head back. Life is so cyclical it’s almost funny.
Enjoy your process and enjoy the place you are in it. Just because it doesn’t feel “good” doesn’t mean it isn’t.