The Effervescence of Discomfort
“Every positive change–every jump to a higher level of energy and awareness–involves a rite of passage. Each time to ascend to a higher rung on the ladder of personal evolution, we must go through a period of discomfort, of initiation. I have never found an exception.” From The Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman
A very dear friend of mine sent me this a while ago. It stuck. Perhaps because I could relate to it more or may be for the fact that it draws out a visual of personal growth as being a ladder which we climb and that connected me to my earlier post: “Conscientious Evolution“. Either way, I guess I wanted to resonate the message and pick up my incomprehensible pattern of thoughts from there. I also wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the “discomfort” that is mentioned above. I fear that at times the process or the product of it all takes too much of the limelight for the discomfort, anxiety and hardship of personal growth and inevitable change to surmount to anything substantial. We tend to forget the feeling of uncertainty and deep perplexity as soon as we reach onto the next level and find satisfaction with the end result. That, I believe, is setting ourselves up, because the moment we forget or set aside the feeling of discomfort that preceded the feeling of satiation, our appreciation and value of what we have achieved dips drastically. In the way our lives are in todays day and age, everything seems to be about instant gratification and as soon as that is achieved, we move on for our next fix.
Life seems too challenging these days to slow down and take a moment, to appreciate, to admire, to uphold the depth and beauty of the details around us. I seem to be getting off page here. This post is about acknowledging the discomfort and more so appreciating it as the bridge that uplifts us into territories that further unfold our destiny. Perhaps I am still churning out vague ideas and big words. So, for the sake of relevance and clarity, I shall try and protrude my ideas in the form of an illustration perhaps.
Dont worry, I am not going to dive into some philosophical realm of metaphysics. Consider for a second every fairy tale or story that you read, heard, watched or experienced growing up as a child. Each of them has a pattern; every story signifies certain elements about life and fantasy and portrays a journey which concludes in the elaborate overcoming of a struggle: Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, Snow White being rescued by the Prince, Cinderellas shoe fits! All the tales have a theme that highlights the overcoming of a struggle despite the presence of an antagonist or a villian.
The way most of these stories are told, the intent is to leave the reader with the upliftment of the “Happily Ever After”, which is inspiring and necessary, I agree, but leaving behind the difficulty of the journey and the anxiety and desperation that accompanied the pain before one reached the zeal of comfort is not the most appropriate, practical or realistic way to do it. I do not wish to disregard, disspell, or disillusion the stories we all love and grew up with, but simply want to emphasize the necessity of acknowledging the role that the journey plays in our accomplishments in life. I yearn to read more stories that make the journey the high note of a tale rather than the climax or the conclusion. It may seem unorthodox or unpleasant, but perhaps it will instill in us a sense of carrying with us the awareness and the consciousness of where we come from, who we are and most importantly what we went through to get where we are. We all carry the burden of our mistakes and bear the scars of our traumas, all I ask is that we look upon them as medals of a battle that made us who we are and absolve our insecurities once for all. Perhaps then peace will find us more often and it will not be just a fleeting idea anymore.
