Moving Away from Discomfort
We constantly encounter moments of discomfort in life. Some of those are small – lost keys, someone being late, a driver cutting in front, a child’s whine, a dropped glass, a twinge in the knee. Some discomfort is more impactful – a job loss, a relationship that ends, a chronic health condition, financial troubles. There is also the discomfort of being exposed to the pain of others on a daily basis – our friends, family members, co-workers, and even strangers via the media. Even at low levels, the reality of discomfort constantly challenges the way we want our lives to feel.
If you pay attention for the next few days, you will notice how often discomfort arises and how automatically we respond: we shift positions to relieve the sore leg, we tune out the offending whine, we suppress feelings of inadequacy or make a mental vow to be ‘better’, we attempt to change the circumstances, and so on.
When you consider our animal origin and nature, our habitual response makes complete sense. We don’t need to fight or reject this. It’s part of our heritage as human animals. Our automatic reaction is to withdraw, push away, repress or reject that which makes us uncomfortable. It goes against instinct to have the intention to ‘see’, to ‘experience’, rather than to reject. As we will explore in further sections though, being present is about being with what is actually here – not just the positive moments, but also the discomfort and – what is also here -- our automatic reactions to it.
In this, I’m not suggesting that we should stay with discomfort to the point of never changing our circumstances. Rather, I’m suggesting that we should develop greater familiarity with what is actually happening – our discomfort, and our reactions to it.
“So, what is suffering? The Sanskrit term is dukha, a term that refers to the unsatisfying quality of experience. It is a general term that covers everything from vague feelings of unease to extreme physical and emotional agony. Suffering, as it is used in the first noble truth, refers to any sense of discomfort. We all experience discomfort, whether it is the slight uneasiness of embarrassment or the intense pain of bone cancer. When discomfort arises, our first impulse is to put an end to it, to stop it any way we can. We are, in effect, trying to separate from what we are experiencing, and by doing so, we separate from life and from the mystery of being.”
Ken McLeod, Wake Up to Your Life
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