A man must master his circumstances or otherwise be mastered by them.
Amor Towles
Life has a way of dolling out what we need most. At times we avoid the painful lessons while we appreciate joyful moments in others. Sometimes we feel vehemently alone, and in others, we feel nothing but love and connection. A few weeks ago, we discussed how to welcome feelings, experience them, and process them (The Emotional Mosaic of Life). But I still noticed this summer there were still some feelings I struggled to sit with. The primary ones were anger, sadness, embarrassment, guilt, and fear.
I began to ask myself why this was the case. Why do we avoid certain emotions? Why do we struggle to feel some while others are easy? How do we welcome these into our reality?
Our emotions are similar to our outer experience. We move toward what feels good and away from pain. This is what evolution has programmed us to do. When we put our hand on a hot stove, we instinctively take it off. The same is true for our more challenging emotions. We numb ourselves to what hurts. But these emotions are a part of our experience, and in avoiding them, we are ignoring fundamental aspects of our reality and life.
During the pandemic, I noticed how much more I and others had started to do this. I would push down the feelings I wouldn’t want to feel, but in doing so, I realized I was pushing everything down. I had become numb to much of life.
These emotions are not in themselves a bad thing; they actually complete our human experience. They are simply another color on the color wheel. How we connect and relate to these emotions is what matters. What I have noticed with challenging emotions is that merely sitting with them and looking within is not enough. I still feel that burning sensation to yell or throw something if I’m angry or to slow down and curl up if I’m sad. Through this method, there was still an emotion that needed to be processed. I needed to take it one step further.
The central question of a warrior’s training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort. How do we practice with difficulty, with our emotions, with the unpredictable encounters of an ordinary day?
Pema Chodron
I learned a bit more about a Buddhist term called Bodhichatta – an inner process that has helped me transform these emotions from something to avoid to something I’m excited to feel. The term means to awaken ourselves with wisdom and compassion so that we might help others. However, the primary idea that stuck with me was the piece on compassion, and the description next to it was “Our ability to feel the pain that we share with others.”
The idea of compassion has, at times, evaded me. I have compassion for others, but for so long, I was unable to extend it to myself. My habit was to push myself by using poor self-talk. I would find the drive in my life by creating an internal heat that would lead to change rather than encouraging myself. We talked about this in Push Vs. Pull. This worked as well as trying to push a jackass through a door. It didn’t work and led to burnout quickly. And in this case, I was often the jackass.
This method of pushing myself no longer worked as I began treatment nearly 5 years ago. In fact, I acted like a dog who knows they’re about to die. They go to a quiet, secluded area, and like them, I wanted to disappear from the world since I didn’t feel like I was part of it. Most of my life had become restricted. I lost the ability to walk and talk, I lost 40+ lbs, and I was confined to a room in pain all day long. I cannot begin to describe how isolating and lonely this experience was. There is no way around that. And with it came many emotions I didn’t want to feel. As a result, I would distract myself with Netflix, books, and social media. But this only compounded the issue at hand.
Like most people do when in pain, whether emotional or physical, I shut down. I want to shut out the pain and numb myself to it. As it turns out, the act of shutting down creates the exact emotions we hope to avoid. But by removing feelings from our lives, we miss not only the bad but also the good. We lose connection to the world around us and are left with nothing but the pain we so wished to avoid.
Compassion opens us back up to life.
There was one night when this became apparent to me. I couldn’t sleep and had run out of ways to distract myself. So I decided to go within. I wanted to feel what this anxiety and insomnia were like in my body. At first, it was overwhelming, but as I sat with myself, I began to connect with my feelings and understand what was there. I felt fear, pain, sadness, anxiety, and excess energy.
I wanted to test the method of using compassion to ease into and connect with life, especially when it was uncomfortable. I started by feeling compassion for all of those who have suffered anxiety or panic attacks. I felt compassion for all of those who are going about their lives tired and barely able to function, but they still do it. As my heart opened to these other people, that internal monologue of poor self-talk slowed, and soon I noticed I had begun to feel compassion for myself.
Only when I opened up to others could I see I was not alone. And in doing so, I no longer resisted reality. I no longer resisted life. This isn’t to say I didn’t still feel these things, but more so, I was now more ok with what I did feel. It felt like I was no longer on an island by myself, facing life’s problems, but there was a more significant connection to others who were alongside me. This gave me greater strength to stay with the present moment and all its pains.
However, we can see this is just one side of the coin. We can also practice this same exercise when we feel joy, gratitude, and love. We can connect with the beauty of this world and all others who appreciate it too. We can go for a walk in the woods and think of the people around the world who take joy in doing the same. We can bite into a delicious meal and think of the people whose passion is creating these culinary delights.
I’ve discovered that by practicing what I call Connecting w/ Compassion, I have found more love for myself and others. Even more, the judging mind that compares our struggles and joys to others softens as well. There is no good or bad when you can connect to the shared humanity of the experience.
If I have a headache, I don’t compare it to the person next to me who complained about theirs. Instead, I think about how it sucks to have one, no matter how big or small. I feel their pain, and in doing so, it softens me. When in pain, instead of a mentality of, “Screw life, look how I can handle this and move through these complex challenges better than others,” I think of how proud I am that I have handled things in the way that I have, both in good ways and bad.
What has taken me over four painful years to learn is that all of our experiences are shared. And it is compassion that connects us to the story of the world.
In doing so, everything becomes palatable. Every experience and emotion is something I can digest and enjoy (with some practice) because I now look for the feeling of community in whatever I may be going through. I can discuss and feel everything from embarrassment to sadness to frustration to the internal stories that I’m worthless or that I have to be someone. It is in opening ourselves to life that we see all its colors, hear all of its songs, and enjoy all of its beauty.
When we experience beauty, love, or enjoyment, we think of others. When we face pain, heartache, or anger, think of others.
We have the choice to let life harden us or soften us, turn us bitter and resentful toward life’s events, or let it open us and feel compassion and connection to the people around us. Compassion creates patience and courage to face what we believed we couldn’t, as we can now see we are not alone in our struggles. We can draw upon the strength of knowing that we will not be the first to experience this and will not be the last.
It is the connection to others that helps us feel whole. The relationship with others helps us dissolve our delusions of us vs. them. We have so much more in common than we believe. If there’s one thing we remember to do in our emotional or spiritual practices, it’s to think of others regardless of what we experience.
By doing this, we no longer reject parts of life we don’t wish to experience, but instead, we welcome it all. Compassion is not an idea but a feeling. A feeling of wholeness with the present moment. A sense of a soft openness to whatever our current reality may bring. Compassion creates community.
As it turns out, staying centered in life’s ups and downs has nothing to do with repression or aversion to them but instead immersing ourselves in them. Rather than being the boat that is tossed around by the surface waves, be the diver swaying gently with the currents below. Diving into what we fear with compassion and courage is one way in which we can cultivate a warrior spirit.
The author, Pema Chodron, said that when asked how long this will take, she replies, “at least until you die.” Choose to let life soften you. Choose to let it permeate your very being, regardless of if you label the circumstances good or bad. We always have a choice. That’s where your power lies. This is how we learn to master our circumstances.