Difficult Things
When I was a kid, my cousin Nathalie and I would see how much pain we could handle. We’d have biting contests and pinching contests, as hard as we could handle it, for the pure sake of seeing what we were made of.
I grew up hearing stories from my dad and how he walked for miles, uphill both ways through the snow to get to school.
The stories we seem to remember aren’t necessarily the successful accomplishments or the successes of goal setting but often, they’re stories birthed out of grit. The unexpected. The “oh shit” moments that make us question if we’re of sound mind.
Discomfort is uncomfortable. Duh. I know. We learn to avoid discomfort and to be on the lookout for our next level of comfort. We like being pampered, waited on, and we love the idea of being handed a lucky shot, of something amazing just falling on our laps so that we can amplify our cushiness even more. I love this too. I think
We can do hard things. It’s doing the hard things that mobilize us out of being complacent. Complacency can be dangerous. Especially if it’s habitual.
It’s different for all of us. My hard thing can’t be compared to your hard thing but growth and reciprocity that comes with being engaged in the process, engaged with our lives can always be found with discomfort.
Discovering who we are comes in swells. It happens when we’re too focused and engaged in the experience to see it. When we don’t realize what just happened until we catch our breath. It happens in giving birth, in making a serious altitude mistake, in finding the courage to paddle out, in saying to yourself “oh…THAT’s what an accidental jibe is, in staring at a blank page, in watching your 8 year old move through dengue fever and come out the other side one step closer to their true self, in being vulnerable enough to ask the big questions, in making the decision not to comply, in fasting, in learning to play a new instrument for no apparent reason, in personally rebuilding the car your son crashed into an embankment, in climbing a mountain and… in learning how to make cheese.
Comparatively speaking, my dis-comforts may be barren compared to yours but It doesn’t matter because it’s mine and herein lies the beauty. The life we all get to paint comes from the colors squeezed out of every difficulty we’ve the courage to regard.
With the world at our fingertips, comfort has become, for many of us, a lifestyle. Comfort is aging’s golden grail. I do wonder though, what happens when we’re too comfortable or when we’ve been comfortable for too long? In the end, the only place I’ve decided I won’t compromise my comfort level is in the arms of my man, in the presence of my kids and with my closest friends.