Following the "Man of Sorrows Acquainted with Grief" Might Mean Getting Acquainted with Your Pain
I am sometimes a ball of worry, often tangled up in knots, rarely the person I want to be.
There's something about pain -- not the good kind, like core work, but the long kind, like migraines, uncontrollable -- and something about silence -- the long kind too, like a week at home alone -- that point to my vulnerability and fragility and fear. The soft space at my center that can be so easily wounded and broken, and can so easily lash out and wound others or act without integrity -- without integrating what I truly believe into my life.
I don't want this soft center of mine to go away, or to harden or deny its own existence. Instead I think I want to feel it more, reaching out from around its protective coating of Ego, helping me live aware of it.
Aware of my soft humanity, the countless ways it is hurt every day by people or words or busyness or those magazines that make me feel ugly. I want to live in such a way that I feel my pain, instead of analyzing my way out of it all the time, or justifying my ego-protection without even knowing it. I want to live soft.
And I don't know if you've ever been that person who's acquainted with long pain or long silence, or if you've ever known that person well, but if you have, I'll bet you know how desperately, terribly impossible it is to be soft there. It's like touching the stove and willing yourself not to have that reflex that bypasses your prefrontal cortex and jerks your hand back. Good luck.
But is it possible to live with integrity when our spinal cord reactions are in play?
The stove is a bad example. Reflexes are sometimes great things.
But they're damage control.
And I want to live with integrity.
For me, in life and areas other than hot stoves, that means integrating.
My soft center, with my core beliefs about life, with God's mission in the world, with what I say I'll do, with what I actually do.
I want to hold myself to that standard, which is the hardest but only way to follow someone like Jesus.
I'll give you a concrete example.
I'm insecure about my nonexistent career.
I go to my part time jobs and I work pretty hard and I feel like crap about myself mostly. It's ego work that goes, "I have a terminal degree / I'm a higher educated Millennial / I'm qualified for jobs that pay 5 times this amount" but it's my soft center that's in pain.
I justify my part time jobs.
"They're temporary."
Ego-protection.
I don't feel the pain.
"Management and administration are important skills."
I'm meaning-starved.
I barely know it until I get reacquainted with long pain. This is the only, only gift of migraines. They make me stop and feel it until I'm raw down to the bone. And then I can admit. My soft center is not fulfilled. I'm a soft puddle on the couch, under a cool washcloth, all out of cures.
But I'd much rather feel that truth than cover it up with clock-punching and justifying and saying I'm living the life. I'd much rather live with the truth that my vulnerable center is in need of a bigger mission.
Because hey, that makes me just like the rest of America I think, probably.
It's a nice side effect of vulnerability that we inherently connect with others from that space.
Also, justification and ego-protection keep me from being like Jesus, being generous or dreaming bigger or inviting people over to my house for ice cream, because I'm too busy up in my head.
I don't know what this may mean to anyone else besides me. I'm sort of just identifying something that stands in the way of me living like the hope-bearing, humble, integrated person I want to be. And I always said that ultra/marathoning was my crash course in feeling pain without Ego-reaction, but here I am, still learning. Maybe that makes two of us.
Or three or 7.4 billion.
My favorite line of Needtobreathe's new album says this, and it's all I have in the way of conclusion so far. I hope it is hope to you too:
"There's a reason why the road is long; it takes some time to make the courage strong." - needtobreathe
There's something about pain -- not the good kind, like core work, but the long kind, like migraines, uncontrollable -- and something about silence -- the long kind too, like a week at home alone -- that point to my vulnerability and fragility and fear. The soft space at my center that can be so easily wounded and broken, and can so easily lash out and wound others or act without integrity -- without integrating what I truly believe into my life.
I don't want this soft center of mine to go away, or to harden or deny its own existence. Instead I think I want to feel it more, reaching out from around its protective coating of Ego, helping me live aware of it.
Aware of my soft humanity, the countless ways it is hurt every day by people or words or busyness or those magazines that make me feel ugly. I want to live in such a way that I feel my pain, instead of analyzing my way out of it all the time, or justifying my ego-protection without even knowing it. I want to live soft.
And I don't know if you've ever been that person who's acquainted with long pain or long silence, or if you've ever known that person well, but if you have, I'll bet you know how desperately, terribly impossible it is to be soft there. It's like touching the stove and willing yourself not to have that reflex that bypasses your prefrontal cortex and jerks your hand back. Good luck.
But is it possible to live with integrity when our spinal cord reactions are in play?
The stove is a bad example. Reflexes are sometimes great things.
But they're damage control.
And I want to live with integrity.
For me, in life and areas other than hot stoves, that means integrating.
My soft center, with my core beliefs about life, with God's mission in the world, with what I say I'll do, with what I actually do.
I want to hold myself to that standard, which is the hardest but only way to follow someone like Jesus.
I'll give you a concrete example.
I'm insecure about my nonexistent career.
I go to my part time jobs and I work pretty hard and I feel like crap about myself mostly. It's ego work that goes, "I have a terminal degree / I'm a higher educated Millennial / I'm qualified for jobs that pay 5 times this amount" but it's my soft center that's in pain.
I justify my part time jobs.
"They're temporary."
Ego-protection.
I don't feel the pain.
"Management and administration are important skills."
I'm meaning-starved.
I barely know it until I get reacquainted with long pain. This is the only, only gift of migraines. They make me stop and feel it until I'm raw down to the bone. And then I can admit. My soft center is not fulfilled. I'm a soft puddle on the couch, under a cool washcloth, all out of cures.
But I'd much rather feel that truth than cover it up with clock-punching and justifying and saying I'm living the life. I'd much rather live with the truth that my vulnerable center is in need of a bigger mission.
Because hey, that makes me just like the rest of America I think, probably.
It's a nice side effect of vulnerability that we inherently connect with others from that space.
Also, justification and ego-protection keep me from being like Jesus, being generous or dreaming bigger or inviting people over to my house for ice cream, because I'm too busy up in my head.
I don't know what this may mean to anyone else besides me. I'm sort of just identifying something that stands in the way of me living like the hope-bearing, humble, integrated person I want to be. And I always said that ultra/marathoning was my crash course in feeling pain without Ego-reaction, but here I am, still learning. Maybe that makes two of us.
Or three or 7.4 billion.
My favorite line of Needtobreathe's new album says this, and it's all I have in the way of conclusion so far. I hope it is hope to you too:
"There's a reason why the road is long; it takes some time to make the courage strong." - needtobreathe
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