Friday Thoughts by the Fire: #77
The pain of comfort
Life is scarier than vampire bats.
It’s true that we’re often pursuing comfort on this journey. We seem to stretch ourselves thin just trying to succeed and find peace. But peace never grows us in the way that discomfort does. No, unfortunately chaos and destruction are better teachers.
The idea that we have to go through hard things to become calloused makes sense on paper, but it’s not ideal for the heart. It doesn’t feel good to hurt.
The Bible talks about suffering. It says that trials produce endurance, and endurance, character.
Endurance: Dealing with a difficult situation without giving way
Character: The distinct mental and moral qualities of an individual
Going through hard things produce the better people that we become on the other side.
Of course we’re tempted with the question, Why me?
When we’re facing trials that we feel are undeserved or unnecessary, there is a tendency to want to get to the bottom of it. But these trials contribute to a necessary resilience—an ability to take more shit, basically.
“It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
Take parenting for example; A parent is forced back into a thoughtful unselfishness time and again. They are seemingly not allowed to have a bad day. Any kind of chink in the armor will show vulnerability that they cannot afford.
Stretched to their means, day after day, just trying to do the right thing. A parent with one child wonders how someone endures two little monsters. Those with two wonder how people can add a third, and so on.
The truth is that you never know your capacity to adjust to change and expectation until it’s forced onto you.
Whether provoked or not, hard times are called hard times for a reason. They have a way of forming us into more confident people, though. The more we go through, the more we realize we can handle.
Sometimes we feel lost, we feel unconfident, confused, and jaded. We feel that we’ve had enough.
Just when we feel like we can’t take anymore, we take more. We bend further, but we don’t break.
Life’s got a harsh way of showing us something we had all along. Our badassery tends to appear when we’re facing a kind of hell.
And to be clear, you can cry and still be a badass.
Nobody says it better than one of my favorite badasses, Rocky Balboa:
The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is going to hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done. Now, if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth. But you got to be willing to take the hit, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you are because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain’t you. You’re better than that!
Life. Scarier than vampire bats. Maybe.
❤️ “It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”