Discomfort - Life in 2020

If I had to choose a word to best describe this year for me so far, it would be discomfort.

I am a planner by nature. I love to have a plan for almost everything: my work day, my summer break, the road trip I'm taking, or even the difficult conversation I need to have with somebody.

There's nothing wrong with creating plans. It allows us to be productive and to accomplish our goals. It's one of the things that sets us apart from animals - our ability to anticipate and prepare for the future. It's why we were just able to send two men into space last weekend and why we'll more than likely find a vaccine for COVID-19.

What I've realized, though, is that my planning doesn't just help me to prepare for the future. It's also my attempt to try and control the future and, thereby, lessen my worry about what may come. Planning, by necessity, means living in the future which means less time living in the present. When uncertainty makes planning difficult, if not impossible, it creates anxiety.

I wrote this post back in November after attending a professional development seminar focused on anxiety. I heard the same presenter again last week and the events of the past few months have made my thoughts in that November post even more true and relevant today. I just finished reading Alan Watt's book The Wisdom of Insecurity and there were a number of things in his book that stuck with me. Most importantly, his point that we can only live in the present moment. By wishing and waiting for future happiness, we are robbing ourselves of experiencing life now while chasing something that is never guaranteed.

If there have ever been times that I tended to live in the past or the future, the months of March, April, and May of this year were certainly among them. So many times I've wished that things could go back to how they were before the coronavirus hit us or, likewise, that we could skip ahead to when we have defeated this virus and can resume our "normal" lives. For so long, we have managed as a society to suppress some of the biggest issues that need addressing. People had warned us about the possibility (rather, the inevitability) of a global disease pandemic, but we were caught largely unprepared. Now, in the midst of this pandemic, the problem of racial inequality has again been brought to light. Many are making it impossible to continue ignoring, and rightfully so.

There are many other issues that need to be addressed in our society. Global climate change, poverty, and inequality are a few that come to mind. While we as humans have great capacity for serving others, we are also great at serving ourselves. Because of this, we often don't change our ways until we are forced. My hope is that we're learning from current events that it's better to tackle these issues out of choice rather than necessity. We need a plan.

Plato said that necessity is the mother of invention. While that may be true, we are seeing now that necessity often comes with pain and suffering. When faced with something difficult, we scramble to find relief, comfort, and happiness as quickly as we can. In other words, we try to live in the past or the future. Rather than plan for and deal with the situation, we avoid or deny it. We want anything but to sit in our present discomfort. The reality, though, is that we cannot live in constant pleasure and happiness. Watts says that "the more we are able to feel pleasure, the more we are vulnerable to pain." In relationships, "the more we are able to love another person and to enjoy his company, the greater must be our grief at his death, or in separation."

We have two options to respond to this. We can either close ourselves off - to the world and to others - as to try lessening pain and suffering, but also sacrificing the possibility of joy and intimacy. Or, we can be present in every moment, good or bad, fully experiencing the pain or joy that comes in each. If we want to experience happiness, we have to be willing to experience pain as well.

This concept is helping me to better understand what St. Paul meant in Romans:

"We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope."

These last few months have been uncomfortable to say the least. For some, they have been unbearably painful. To some degree we have all had to deal with uncertainty, loss, separation, isolation, and grief. It is not easy and it is not comfortable, but we cannot spend the time longing for the past or living in the future. Neither can we simply plan away our anxiety or skip over the difficult parts of life. We have to be present - even rejoice in - these times knowing that we will come through with more endurance, character, and hope. We will grow from this. We will come through this. When we do, if we were willing to fully engage in the discomfort, we will then be able to fully experience the joy that comes after.

How Do Lobsters Grow?
(Another beautiful analogy shared in last week's presentation)

https://youtu.be/dcUAIpZrwog