Yesterday was an off day. Nothing dramatic, I just wasn’t in my usual groove and I spent a good chunk of the day trying to force my way back into it.
By afternoon, more out of exhaustion than wisdom, I finally admitted that it wasn’t happening. The uncomfortable feeling stayed, but I stopped struggling against it. That was most of the weight right there.
It’s one of those lessons I’ve relearned constantly throughout life, last drilled into me a few years back while standing at the kitchen sink during a challenging phase of my life.
Washing dishes, mentally wrestling with my situation for the hundredth time, I finally asked myself what I was fighting so hard to avoid. The answer didn’t come back in words: it was a heavy, burning feeling in the pit of my stomach. A sensation.
Weeks of dread, and it all came down to a physical sensation. That’s what I was so scared of – much more so than the story I’d been telling myself.
So I stopped resisting it and just let it be. It burned, but I could handle it. More than that, I was actually fine. It was just a feeling. Intense, but clearly survivable.
I finished the dishes and moved on, a new phase of my life started with a turn that took just a few seconds.
But no change is permanent. Yesterday I was back on the riverbank of experience, pointlessly trying to negotiate with the current. When I finally got back in, chest-deep in the cold water with no intention to bail, I wouldn’t say I was comfortable. But I was unmistakably alive.
Acceptance hadn’t served as a magic trick to make the challenging feelings vanish. Good, that was never the deal. You don’t find your strength by staying on the bank.