Are You Always Running Away?
“I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.”
This is an excerpt from one of my favorite things ever written, The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer (look it up, it will move you).
I love this part so much, because how often do we just accept the presence of hardship and truly feel it? Do we ever really just sit with pain?
So often we run from the pain. We are told not to feel, to stay positive, to keep our chin up and just keep going. But thats the problem-we just. keep. going. We do everything BUT actually feel. We hustle and go go go and shop and eat and drink and workout and get lost in books and movies and other people’s lives and stay so “busy” that we don’t actually feel anything. We focus so much on the moving forward part and staying in the light that we forget to sit with the darkness. If even just for a bit. Without trying to fix anything. Just feel.
What if it doesn’t need fixing in this moment? What if it just needs space? Whatever “it” is. That hardship you’re going through. The pain you can’t dare accept. I understand, it’s easier to avoid it, for fear that if we let just the tiniest ounce of feeling in, it would swallow us up completely and we may never be able to find our way back.
But you will. That’s the beauty of sitting with pain. Of accepting it fully, for exactly what it is. You feel every twist and turn and stab and ache and then, you let it go. You are able to let it go because it ran it’s course. What would the light be without the darkness?
So I am asking you to stop running from the things that hurt the most. Experience it without resistance. Slow down. You are so capable of feeling it head on. Sit with it. Just be. Cry. Feel. Scream. But do not cover it up. Feeling things entirely isn’t a weakness. In fact, sitting with the pain is a strength. I won’t lie and tell you it will be easy. It will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done. But it will be worth it, and you’ll come out the other side a person that you didn’t even know you were capable of being. I promise.
It’s powerful. It’s human. And it will set you free.
