purge your meaningless suffering
I went to buy some new jeans the other day. I buy clothes like an old mining prospector that lives in the mountains and doesn’t come down but once a year to the general store for supplies. I don’t know why I am this way. It hurts to do chores like that for me. I don’t mean that in some cliche guys dont shop way. I feel bad in the store, I feel bad in the mirror, I feel bad in the shoe store. I feel like a video game character standing on lava.
I think I didn’t have very good models of self care growing up. My dad taught me the value of training, and my mom taught me the importance of caring for others, but that silent discipline of kindess pointed to the self I never learned.
That missing skill becomes more and more obvious as I age. Its a type of carelessness i am trying to do away with now. Funny enough, we often learn how to care for ourselves better from learning to care for others. I am in a very happy relationship now, and my partner cares for me. Not just by saying nice things but by a daily drip of actions that make my life better. She cares for me like a horse lol. Give me the oats, brush me down, give him the medicine when hes sick. Its a type of kindness that is rooted in her much more developed sense of self care than me.
This is important and here is why:
when I dont care for myself in simple ways, I suffer.
Life is suffering. Love can involve suffering, success of any stripe or in any field is a sure way to encounter suffering. But if suffering is so much a guarantee, then why am I in such a hurry to add more to my life?
When I was a little kid, I used to share a room with my brother Jonathan who was 2 years older. I was top bunk and he was bottom bunk. Before bed time, turning off the light was a constant source of contention. No one wants to get out of bed to switch a light off so we would fight. I remember he would always say “I can sleep with it on” and that was his trump card because I couldn’t. I would storm down that weird ladder that all bunk beds to turn it off.
When you encounter people, everyone has struck a deal with life that you may not be aware of, even though you have done the same. The deal is simple, where will you hurt and for what cause?
Suffering is part of most bargains. Pay this price, and receive this good thing. But I think everyone has folds of their life where they are paying a price and receiving nothing, or even hurting themselves. Like my brother as a kid, you shouldn’t learn to sleep with the light on. Its bad for you. Or like me as an adult. I need to learn to shop for myself even if I have to shop online and stay home.
The reason is, not shopping hurts more. As bad as I felt in the store that day, it feels worse to wake up and hate what your wearing. Maybe your body has changed, the season is colder or warmer etc. before long you realized how much discomfort youve added to your daily life by not doing a simple thing.
I think most creative types are operating at a net negative when it comes to how they use their energy. Most use it on so many dumb things that its kinda amazing anyone gets anything done at all.
But what if you sanded down all the rough edges from your experience? What if you took one gram of uneeded pressure off your back? I helped out in a kids class the other day. For fun, I let them all try to do chin ups and I assisted them if needed. Some kids are a long way from doing a single one. And other kids, were literally right there, so close.
Guess what, the kid who completely cant and the kid who almost could but came up short looked a lot similar in how they reacted. Sometimes all that matters is getting over the bar.
But what I tried to teach them that day and I guess what I am reminding myself and maybe you is this: sometimes you are just a couple good decisions away from a life that you know you could have. You have to purge. Its almost always something you are allowing that is hurting you. Suffering for a cause is noble. Suffering and receiving nothing is the life of a serf. Even if you don’t feel positive right now, the first way forward is to stop engaging in things that make it worse.