SELF
When You Realize Pain Is Not The Enemy
Pain is your Bruce Willis.
Pain is like Shyamalan reading the first reviews of The Happening — it hurts like hell, but it helps you, like, 7 years later.
In my whole life I was drawn to pain and trauma, but I don’t think that is necessarily bad. It taught me how to be empathetic, how to talk about my deepest emotions without feeling weak or helplessly vulnerable. It had taught me how to be Cole Sear, basically. Once we become honest and vulnerable without caring what other people have to say, without paying attention to their judgement, we become infinitely free.
When my ex-girlfriend broke up with me after 6 years (in my early twenties), I was crushed, but that led me to one of my best decisions: I’ve decided to move to London. When I migrated to London, I was a terrified little boy, I didn’t speak the language, and I barely had any work experience. I was scared shitless, but that was the point. In different forms, desperation and misery were my secret mentors.
Everything “vigorous” comes from pain.
The sooner we accept that, the sooner we can use it to make us improve. It took me a long time to realize that, and it doesn’t mean that I’m not afraid of it anymore. None of us wants pain in our lives but that comes regardless, whether we want it or not. Same as happiness does. We don’t choose our happiness, although, we try to hold onto it, but that’s not how it works.
We remember losses and failures much sharper than we remember happy moments. They are more significant, and force us to overcome certain situations, revaluate decisions, and goals.
If we pay attention to small moments, we can find beautiful things. I know how corny that sounds, but it’s true. Life is freaking long, and it’s only worth it if we don’t miss those seemingly insignificant joy-bits.
Just think about it, how long do you wait for great things to happen; to meet the love of your life, find people who become your lifelong friends, make your passion your job? How often does that occur? Life feels short, because we wait for these things to fall into our lap so long when they actually arrive, we feel the burden of time. And we ask the wrong question: How did it go by so quick? The right question is “Why did I wait for so long for that to happen?”
We avoid pain at any cost, whether it comes as a form of failure, heartbreak, or embarrassment. Once we decide to stop doing that, and look those self-created mental monsters in the eye, those happy moments will start to flow.
Pain might destroy us for a while, but also makes us move forward eventually. And when that happens, we will concentrate on the great stuff: friends, love, and passion.
Without that we wouldn’t grow, wouldn’t make the necessary steps forward. We stall, avoid, and procrastinate because we don’t want to get hurt. We don’t want to face the wrong choices we made, the disappointments we caused, and the embarrassment that made us insecure. We are denying negative emotions. With that mentality, we choose not to learn how to overcome hardship, and failure. And make no mistake, they will keep coming back like dead people in The Sixth Sense.
Until we learn to listen to what Bruce Willis and the others have to say.
If you liked what you’ve read and want more bits and pieces of daily motivation crumbs, you should read this one as well:
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