Life Has A Way Of Kicking You When You’re Down, But That’s When The Growth Occurs
Struggle Is An Oppressive Adversary
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.” — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
How do you change your circumstances when you’re lying face down in the gutter?
Can a person recover from despair and overcome their pain and suffering?
Pain is a menacing threat that grows in intensity and never leaves you. There are moments of respite, though it never leaves. Not in the way you want it to.
That’s what sadness is like — despair interwoven with glimpses of elation.
How do you transcend the pain?
Are you meant to overcome or endure it?
Does the person who endures the most prevail?
So many questions, yet answers are few.
Life is a one way conversation with a universe that speaks but doesn’t listen. She yells in a bellowing roar that you feel like drowning it out by retreating into the sanctuary of your mind.
Struggle is an oppressive adversary, like a boa constrictor enveloping you, pausing momentarily — and then smothering you again.
Can you relate to this feeling?
You don’t want to be defined by your suffering, that’s not who you are, nor whom you intend to be.
You might recall a time when pain meant grazing your knee at soccer practice. The wounds eventually healed, and you are left with a faint scare to mark your fall.
Nowadays, pain lasts longer than a grazed knee. It is like being chased in a terrifying dream that never ends, stuck in an endless loop.
In such moments, you may feel characterised by your struggle and assume the identity of the wounded victim. You have no choice because life thwarts you every time you try to rise.
Garret Kramer writes in The Path of No Resistance: “All of us have experienced struggles that appeared to be the result of a certain situation, only to later ask ourselves: This situation isn’t so complicated. What in the world was troubling me?”
But here’s the antidote to suffering: You are pushed to grow in the moments, days and weeks that follow the despair. For some, it might be years, dare I say decades for growth to be realised.
Lean Into Your Pain
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” — Winston Churchill
I wish I could mend your pain in the way my mother took care of my grazed knee. But sometimes you must go it alone. For it was Winston Churchill who once said: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
He knew pain and suffering ultimately recedes to give way to inner growth.
Wishing away the pain does nothing to cultivate grit and strength of character. The gentlest souls are those who have endured the greatest hardships and gained a humility for life.
“Let us never look hardship in the face and run. To do so is to tear ourselves from this world and this time, and to relinquish our growth and contributions in life.”
“Let us always remember that in addressing our pain and fear, we gain mastery over them,” writes Brendon Burchard in The Motivation Manifesto.
You are but a small cog in a wheel that is forever expanding and contracting.
I’m reminded of a quote by the Buddha who said: “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”
So, are you allowing life’s pain and struggle to define you or using it to grow and expand? Remember, the universe favours expansion.
Everything taking place in your life right now is leading to the unfolding of your life’s narrative.
You can recoil from it or lean into it.
Suffering is the seed life plants in you to reveal your greatest potential, so you may come to know your authentic self.
