Choose Your Pain

Choose Your Pain

“Growth is painful.
Change is painful.
Yet nothing is as painful as staying stuck Somewhere that you don’t belong.”
–Author Unknown

In this life, there will be pain.  Some of that pain will be unavoidable.  The loss of loved ones, tragic accidents and unforeseeable disasters are just part of living.  Other pain will be optional.  Being honest helps us to prevent the shame of being caught in a lie.  Acting in a timely manner helps to evade the pain of regret. Living a sedentary lifestyle avoids many physical pains, at least in the short term.  However, many life decisions carry pain on both sides.  Avoiding relationships can avert the pain of rejection but it can lead to the ache of loneliness and solitude.

So in reality, life is careful balance between the pursuit of pleasures and the avoidance of pains.  It is in pursuing this balance that we can fall into grave errors.  Too often, many of us avoid short term discomfort and thereby forego long term benefits.  Growth and change are positive actions that grant long term benefits.  However, growth and change usually involve some painful and unpleasant situations.  Looking back on honestly on our failures, mistakes and errors in order to understand them and learn from them is a very humbling and uneasy process.  However, failure to perform such reflection on our actions results in our suffering the repetition of these same behaviours an incurring the same agonizing results.

Likewise, our desire to maintain our comfort keeps us in places that eventually create anguish and distress.  Abuse of credit to keep a certain lifestyle will ultimately lead to a tormenting situation in the future.  Physically being sedentary is enjoyable for many years but eventually that lifestyle will lead to suffering and illness.  Our bodies were designed to be active and proper activity comes with some inconvenience and discomfort.  If we unwisely ignore the future results of our choices then our decisions to avoid pain or to pursue pleasure will end in unexpected sorrow.

So this is our daily challenge:  Choose your pain.  Accept that life will have some pain.  You cannot avoid it all.  Hedonism will ultimately have to pay the piper one day.  We cannot avoid paying the eventual cost for either our negligence or indulgence.  Pick your pain wisely.  Understand both the benefits and the cost – short term and long term.  Ask if what feels good now will hurt in the future.  Question if the pain that you are avoiding presently might have some ultimate benefit that you require.  Learn from the pain of that past and use that learning and experience to shrewdly pick your pains today so that tomorrow you might evade significant agonies and instead harvest the better pleasures that you so greatly desire.

“Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
― William Goldman (“The Princess Bride”)

©2018 Scott D. Wilson

Await or Create

Await or Create

“My dictionary defines opportunityas a set of circumstancesthat makes it possible to do something.The world has conditioned us to wait for opportunity,have the good sense to spot itand hope to strike at the appropriate time.But if opportunity is just a set of circumstances,why are we waiting around for the stars to align?Rather than waiting and pouncingwith a high degree of failure,you might as well go aheadand create a set of circumstances on your own.If you make the opportunity,you will be first in position to take advantage of it.We don’t have to wait for it.We create it.”–Biz Stone

Without your participation, in the next few minutes, your heart will continue to beat, you will continue to breathe and your existence will proceed.  This is what happens to us in this thing we call life. In this manner, we are similar to the animals who live from moment to moment with no greater aspirations. Yet life is so much more than just what happens to us!

Sure we can go through life reacting to all that comes our way.  In fact, this is what the vast majority of people do, day in and day out.  There is nothing shameful or wrong with this way of living.  If you are content doing what everyone else is doing and more or less getting what they are getting then put yourself in neutral and coast along.  This is the easiest and most efficient way to live within our culture.  The greatest personal energy expenditures will only occur if dangerous or unwanted situations occur.   

However, you may have noticed that this is not the manner by which those who are succeeding choose to live.  They do not wait for life to deliver itself to them.  They pursue what they want and make it happen.  Whether it be health, wealth, fame, skill, power or something else they do not sit passively waiting for it.  They plan carefully and work diligently to create the circumstances that will foster what they wish to achieve.  If you want to be exceptional, that is you wish to be the exception rather than the rule, then you too will need to stop being passive.

I cited Biz Stone in the quote above because it highlighted the fact that the “world has conditioned us to wait for opportunity.”  We sit and hope for the right circumstance to come to us.  We even actively prepare for these situations so that we do not miss them when they appear.  All of that is good. However, it is all passive at its core.  We bemoan when the stars do not align and we curse that others seem to have all the ‘luck.’  Meanwhile, we have missed countless chances to create our own opportunities. I know of no one who has not been guilty of this mindset, myself included.   

A hunter can train to shoot well and buy all the best gear.  They could also learn all the habits and ways of the creatures that they wish to hunt.  Then our hunter might go to the proper environment and the appropriate time and sit in a random promising spot and hope to see their prey walk by.  This will sometimes result in a successful expedition.  The more successful hunters learn various ways to lure their prey towards them.  They use calls and bait to entice the creatures.  They carefully check their hunting grounds for signs of their prey’s activity.  They’ll work hard to understand their target and to encounter it.  The will use their time and energy wisely and will not rely on simple chance and their results will show it.

An aspiring actor who hopes to be discovered would be considered foolish if they did not actively pursue every possible chance to showcase themselves.  Yes, they could take acting lessons and practice with various groups and guilds, but all that would be in vain if they did not actively work to promote their name and reputation in the entertainment industry.  Sure they might take roles hoping to get noticed by someone influential who might happen to attend a performance.  However, they could equally well invite influential people to their shows and provide them tickets.  They could take some well calculated risks to create the circumstances that they desire.

The difference between passive and active may seem subtle but it is significant.  Passive prays, waits and watches.  Active does this and then also plans, creates, pursues, entices, provokes and works.  Passive looks for chances.  Active intentionally takes risks.  Passive hopes.  Active intends and does.  Passive awaits inspiration.  Active gains inspiration through activity.  Passive relies on motivation.  Active relies on discipline and routine. This holds true for all of and all our dreams and ambitions.  We can wait for the universe to arbitrarily deliver opportunities to us or we can work with what the universe has already provided in order to create such opportunities. Health, money, peace of mind… no matter what your goal may be you have a choice:

Live passively and let life happen

or live actively and make life happen.

©2018 Scott D. Wilson