Sunday Story...Pain Cave

Sunday Story…Pain Cave

It had to be uncomfortable, carrying that much weight around. She was walking on the sides of the feet, out of breath from the door to the car, hurting in every joint trying to support the weight. It hadn’t happened overnight. It was slow and insidious, the result of bad food and lack of activity. And now it looks like an impossible task, like climbing K2 in your street clothes with no guide. And really, it’s OK the way it is. This is pain she knows, pain she understands, and although painful, it is comfortable like wearing shoes that don’t fit quite right…you get used to them.

I often see people who are stuck in their lives. The pain they are living with is the one they are comfortable with. This pain is familiar, it has family feel to it, kind of warm and fuzzy even though I know it hurts and I know it isn’t good for me.

There are lots of places we all get stuck…myself included. Sometimes we get stuck in our relationships. You know we get complacent, we begin to think it’s OK, it’s good, we don’t really need to work on it anymore. Or maybe it’s worse than OK. Maybe it’s bad and we know it…abusive or worse. Yet we stay since we don’t know what is on the other side. Maybe the other side has pain that will be even worse! Maybe the other side holds a loneliness that we will find unbearable. And then there is the pain of making change too.

Sometimes we get stuck around our health and fitness. We have covered this ground before. It is very easy to give up on these areas. And as we age it gets harder and harder to get back in shape. If you have done it before you remember the pain that went into it. And you know that the way you feel isn’t really that bad is it? And it is easy, let’s be honest. It’s easy (and cheap) to eat crap food. It’s easy to sit and not move. It’s easy to be just like everyone else you see. You don’t have to stand out one way or the other…you have achieved terminal normality.

Sometimes we get stuck around our jobs or our finances. Often we just give up on our dreams, the dreams we held when we were younger…maybe dreams of being a doctor, or a firefighter, or a teacher. The hurdles we have to jump to get there look just too large. Plus what I am doing is working, after all. What I am doing is what I have always done. And what I have been getting from doing that is OK. It works. And really why should I put myself out to do anything more? After all I will be ___________(insert your age here four years from now) and that just looks too old to do whatever it is that I really dream of doing. You are OK, you are going to settle into your rut (grave) and continue that slow slide into mediocrity.

Aren’t you tired of all that yet? How is terminal normality working for you? How is it working for your kids? After all they are looking at you living out of your pain cave and wondering why you don’t do something about it. Worse yet you are training them to discover their own pain caves to live in. You are setting the example of how grownups live while at the same time trying to get them to understand that the world is wide open and they can do anything they want to do. It is this sort of hypocrisy that our children find so confusing. We are saying one thing and doing quite another.

I suggest you start looking around your life and inspecting some of those stuck places. I suggest you get your flashlight out and start illuminating that pain cave. You can flush out those stuck places. You can re-discover the places you have forgotten, the dreams you put on the back burner…they are all waiting for you right where you left them.

And once you find them (which may be the easy part by the way) you have to decide what you are going to do about them. Because change is not easy. It may be simple but it won’t be easy---how many times have you heard me say that?
It isn’t easy to get off the fast food and soda binge train. It isn’t easy to start a consistent exercise program when just walking to the kitchen and back is a struggle. It isn’t easy to walk away from a long term relationship with no prospects on the horizon. It isn’t easy to find more rewarding work. But how long are you willing to live in that pain cave? How long will you stay in your rut? Long enough for it to be a grave? Is that the example you want to leave for the world to emulate? Are those the words you want on your headstone…”He settled for good enough?”

Change is hard. We have a natural resistance to change. We have a fear of the unknown and the older we get the larger that fear gets and the more calcified we become in our positions. But the alternative is worse…cowering in your pain cave, afraid to move, afraid to get out into the light, afraid of being the special person you are to become. There is no reason to be a pain-caveman. There is no reason you can’t change. And there is only one thing standing between the person you dream of and the person you are. And the thing that stands between those? You. You are in the way. The you that is your ego. The you that is afraid to change, afraid to turn on the light. So decide to get unstuck, to get out of your own way and start moving toward the light. You deserve it and you owe it to the rest of us.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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