Difficult feeling avoidance strategy

"Rather than learning how to tolerate difficult feelings, many of us have learned only to avoid them...[O]ur inclination is often to run from our emotions because they carry with them the threat of destruction. Indulging ourselves in thinking as a protective alternative, we try to avoid our fear by staying aloof of our feelings." Mark Epstein, in Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart

One sentence captures what I've been struggling to express for many, many months. This sentence slapped me when I read it this morning. I was stunned. To see in such plain terms made it's reality all the more stark. The undercurrent of fear in so many of pursuits, the hint of it that I had spotted last week, was made all the more clear.

What the future holds

So what in the future as I move beyond The Edge and slowly negate the influence of the anti-me? Big bummer coming, but I have to say that not much is going to change in my life. At least not in terms of where I am and what I'm doing. How I go about doing these things, how I relate to other people in my life, and my level of engagement are things that should be very different.

Imagining a greatly improved future was always a favorite hobby of mine as a kid. All the things that were holding me back would be gone and everything I wanted would be ready and waiting for me to enjoy. Status played a big role in those imaginings. I wanted status because I didn't really know anything else that was worth my effort. There was a certainty to status symbols that more abstract things just didn't seem to deliver. I was too busy looking past what made me worthwhile and looking for ways that would make other people take me seriously, like me, think I was valuable. I have extensively documented how I've sought similar status type things here. Law school, new jobs in new places.

So my new future is about all those things that I overlooked and failed to appreciate for all too much of my life. People, relationships, things that I enjoy no matter what the popular opinion of that activity may be. I still want a rewarding career, but I'm not about putting in mad hours and neglecting the rest of my life to make that happen. I still want to push myself and keep learning and getting stronger, but that's more about being more healthy and present than proving something to myself. I've always had this nagging sense that in order to really have proved something, to have really succeeded, I would have to really struggle and fight and battle to reach some impossible goal. My reluctance to take on that struggle felt like a failure. That's the vestige of something that I picked up at a time in my life that is no longer relevant. Throwing myself into the maelstrom was the essential step.

That's the absolutely wrong way to look at it. I was running on Thursday morning and rather than focus on the pain and fighting against it, struggling to stay strong in the presence of a sensation that was making me feel bad, I simply let it be. No struggle, no wanting it to go away. I experienced it, but I didn't feel like I was in it. It was like watching waves from the shore rather than standing right in the breakers. I was aware that they were there, but I wasn't letting that energy control my state of mind. That fear that always gripped me when things got a little uneasy just slipped away. There was nothing to be afraid of. I didn't have to fight against it. There was no need to battle. It was just a feeling. It was temporary, I was in control.

I didn't worry about feeling bad. I just kept on running. Bad feelings will come, but they will also go away. There is no need to fixate on them and force them into submission. Accept and acknowledge.

What does the future hold? I don't know, and, to a certain extent, I'm not going to burden myself with caring all that much. I'm going to live my life as deeply as possible.