Life Can Be Anything, If You Let It.

The Two Arrows

There is an old story about two arrows. The first arrow is what the world throws at you. The unavoidable pain. The loss, the diagnosis, the phone call you did not want to get. The second arrow is the suffering that follows the pain, and that one is optional.

So the question is not how do I avoid the first arrow. That is where our lack of control lives.

The question is: how do I exert control where I actually have it? That is where freedom exists.

What If Stress Is Not the Enemy

An unsettling event occurs. That is the first arrow, and stress is what it leaves behind. It shows up whether you invite it or not, and it is an unavoidable part of being human.

The second arrow is what we do next. We tend to hold the belief that stress is bad, that its presence means something has gone wrong, that a life going well would not feel like this. Your stress only bothers you because of your view of it.

That view is not random. Biology drives us toward comfort, so any amount of stress, run through that lens, gets filed away as a threat. We are built to want it gone.

But is it a threat?

What if we let stress be more than that. Not a negative, but a much more complex set of feelings and emotions. Stress is the driver of growth. It is a vital part of movement, and yet we fight it so.

If you have spent any time in the gym, you know exactly what I mean. You do not grow without pushing your body. You have to work the muscle and break it down first so it can rebuild. Stronger, faster, bigger.

Stress Is the Nature of Existence

We can look into nature, and even into the cosmos, to find this everywhere.

The larger an object, the greater its gravitational pull. We are constantly falling toward the sun. Our solar system is constantly falling toward the center of the Milky Way, moving toward fusion, toward the ultimate expression of stress, when two masses collide. Stress is the nature of existence itself. Unavoidable, even in objects without consciousness as we understand it.

Your job stresses you out. Your time in college did. The pressure you put on yourself to be successful does. Good. Now notice what happens to those same years once you are out of them.

In the moment it feels overwhelming, all consuming. It is only once the stress begins to fade that we start to hold a rose-tinted view of those parts of our lives. We look back with fondness. We yearn to relive years that, at the time, felt like eternal torment.

What if you could see through the stress while you are still inside it? What if you could look at the present with that same strange sense of nostalgia you feel when you look backwards?

The Tension You Live In

There is a part of us drawn toward growth, and it is a constant pressure. We cannot let that pressure consume us, but we cannot pretend it is not there either.

We live in constant tension. The part of us that is human and simply wants to be comfortable, and the part of us that is something more, that yearns for a meaningful existence through ambition, through striving, through success and through failure.

Acknowledge the tension. Be aware of the dichotomies inside you. When you can see them, and have the courage to move toward them instead of looking away, your greatest opportunity for growth is waiting right there.

You Are Not Changing, You Are Noticing

When you turn toward your stress, toward your pain, you do not become someone new. You become someone who is capable of embracing the difficulties of life and growing in ways you only dreamed of. Someone who always was capable, without knowing it.

Your experience of the world can change. Your experience of yourself can change. Your experience of your emotions can change. There is no end to your capacity for growth.

To say your experience of life changes is a bit of a misnomer. It is not that the experience changes. You are becoming aware of what was already there.

You can become anything. Your life can become anything. But that anything is not created new out of the abyss. It is what always was. This is the paradox. To become the best version of yourself is to recognize that it already exists. Right here. Right now. In the present.

Finding Solace in the Grey

So where in your life does that tension exist? Where can you begin to move toward instead of turning away?

In that answer lies your compass. Your direction toward the best version of yourself, which is the version already sitting here right now. The version that does not run from stress but embraces it and sees it for what it is. Not only the bad. Also the good.

There is no black and white in the universe. It is riddled with grey. Perhaps what you need is not to live in the white, or in the black, but to find solace in the grey.

Working Together

If reading this brought something to mind, that is worth paying attention to. Therapy is one place to sit with the tension you have been carrying and figure out what you want to do with it. There is no pressure to have it figured out before you call.