Seek the Discomfort
If there is one way I know how to grow as a person, it is to find that which is uncomfortable, that which triggers you, and immerse yourself in that place. Carl Jung once said, “In each of us there is another whom we do not understand”. Finding the discomfort is what lets you peel the onion of yourself and find the core of who you are. I find myself often faced with two options, I can either fall into routine and find comfort in its familiarity or I can stretch and let spontaneity become the routine. I have once heard music described as the fulfillment and unfulfillment of expectations. A rise and fall of tension. If I never seek and sit in the tension, finding it to be no less beautiful than the release, then I can never truly capture a piece. I have lately been sitting in my discomfort, what causes me tension, and I don’t necessarily seek a release from it, but I do seek to love and accept it. And only from this process am I able to take each step with complete authority. Only through this process can I truly connect to myself and all those around me.
A key to this process is to find the difference between listening to your mind and listening to your body.
Because what you feel tells you far more than what you think.
I choose to mention all this for two reasons: 1) It is the predominant feeling of my now 2) The wisdom of this is currently being largely ignored.
Let me explain point two. Recently, there has been a shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. A tragedy to which I bow my head in a few seconds of silence. Yet the response to this has been to avoid the discomfort. To push it off and fall back into routine of the “rational” mind. Take a simple powerful exchange between Marco Rubio and Cameron Kasky. Rubio attended a town hall meeting not to hear, seek, and listen to the moment but to fall into a politician’s routine of meeting with his constituents. He showed up, but was not truly in the moment.
Kasky on the other hand, took perhaps one of the most courageous stands on national television which I have ever seen.
Not only was Kasky listening to the feelings from his harrowing experience, but he had come to accept their presence and power and ACT on them.
He was not there just to make a point, he was there to make America face its discomfort and to make America finally say to its shadow, let’s talk.
The reaction to these kids making a stand has largely been, “You’re entitled, this is a democratic parties’ sham, go shut up and study”. The Wall Street Journal even ran an opinion piece on this. This is just an extension of the rational mind refusing to face any construct which does not fit its current mental model.
Blot out emotion, because what matters is what we think not how we feel.
Even further, much of this attack is coming from a place of refusing to accept that “I feel uncomfortable”. And my message to everyone is, love and accept the parts of yourself which make you uncomfortable. Do not push it onto others, but let it sit within yourself. Because only when we start shifting ourselves from our thoughts to our feelings, from the outside to the inside, stop drawing lines and starting holding out hands, can we accept that a shadow is just a part of light. We don’t need a show, we need a discussion. Finally, nobody can do anything TO YOU. Somebody does something and the to you is a part of you that reacts to this. Find that, seek it, and go from saying, “What the heck?!” to “Aah, very nice”. Extend a hand and tell it, “Hello, let’s talk.”
