Suffer Fast or Suffer Slow

I stood at the edge of the icy lake, willing myself to jump in, but feeling locked in place. As my friend popped her head up from the cool water, she shouted back at me, “You can suffer fast, or suffer slow. Just jump in!” This had become a frequent issue on all my backpacking trips. After a long, arduous hike, I would dip my foot into the lake, knowing this would offer a refreshing end to the day, but find myself frozen, unable to take the next step. 

The bracing sensation that washes over me in these moments is familiar. In fact, it is so familiar, it has become my general state of being. At the edge of the water, and in life in general, I steel myself for the worst. At some point in the past, I unconsciously decided that tensing up against anticipated pain would protect me from getting blindsided by catastrophe. If I just kept a watchful eye and a taut frame, surely nothing could knock me down. Even though this strategy failed time and time again, I persisted, certain that if I increased the tension one more notch, I could stave off the next attack. Each difficulty led to greater constriction. 

Exclusion — tighten. 

Betrayal — tighten. 

Rejection — tighten. 

Loss — tighten. 

At some point I began to believe that I just needed to sense the pain coming sooner to better fortify myself. 

A worrying thought — tighten.

Energy that subtly shifts — tighten. 

The first sign I’m not in control — clench. 

This flawed method was supposed to strengthen me and defend against pain, but each choice to turn up the tension was simply a choice to suffer slowly. It has left me bracing through life, the good and the bad. I suffer through the anticipation of future hurt. I suffer through the gut punch of pain in the present. And then I suffer as I endlessly replay each difficult moment over and over again in my mind, believing that through this type of careful reflection, I will extract the exact lesson I need to avoid all future pain. Shockingly, despite all that rumination, I have not gleaned that nugget of wisdom yet.

I do not remember what it feels like to fully relax my shoulders. The stiffness in my neck often gives me headaches. Even in my sleep, my hands are contorted into tight fists and I wear a mouthguard to protect my teeth from cracking under the force of my clenched jaw.

Instead of preparing me to take on the challenges of life, bracing myself has only made me brittle and fragile, sensitive and defensive. It is the rigid house that cracks in the earthquake. 

Now I am standing in the rubble, planning how to rebuild. One thing I know for sure is that I need to use more pliable materials. The goal is clearly to soften; to be more flexible. But simply writing it is not helpful. The fact is, I have read about letting go and surrendering for over a decade and nothing has changed. The Tao Te Ching reminded us to, “be like water,” over 2500 years ago. Unsurprisingly, telling myself to, “just relax,” only makes it worse. The question is not so much what to do, but how to do it. How does one relax into a world that is so uncertain and unpredictable? 

Over time, I was able to identify the false thought that keeps me stuck in place at the edge of the icy lake. I worry that if I jump in, I will never be warm again. The fears spiral and coalesce. I will never acclimate to the water, then the wind will pick up. I will be so cold to the bone, I will not have enough body heat to warm the sleeping bag through the night. When I say it out loud, I can see the gap between my fears and reality. I can also see the similarity between this fear and my larger one. If I let the sadness or pain overtake me, I might never be happy again. And so I brace myself against it, fight off the sadness, thinking that this is the only way to keep from drowning in the darkness. 

But thankfully this past year has taught me something. I can survive the cold water and the dark night of the soul.  And that survival is built on trust. I can trust that all things change. I can trust in the vast network of people I have collected throughout my life to help pull me back up from the depths. And most importantly, I can trust in my own tenacious capacity to find my way back to the light.