A few weeks ago I got to have a conversation with a respected Buddhist teacher. I asked him if it ever got discouraging, working with people who are stuck in one place and seemingly unable to dislodge themselves. And I’ve been thinking about his answer ever since.
People change when they want to change, he told me. And if they don’t want to change, there’s nothing else to be done. Even when they do want change, the process is difficult and sometimes the desire alone is not enough. And sometimes people are so caught up in their own stories that they really don’t want to change. They’re comfortable in their suffering.
I know exactly what he meant, because I’ve been comfortable in my suffering in the past. It’s a strange way to think about things because of course, being comfortable in suffering is often vastly uncomfortable. The key is in its relativity: that however uncomfortable the suffering might be, it is less uncomfortable than the alternative. It is less uncomfortable than the prospect of what change might mean.
Photo by Graham.
However, it is not only fear of change that is a driver here. It is also an inability to imagine anything different. It’s so easy for us to become caught up in our worldviews to the point that we don’t remember that other worldviews even exist, much less have the possibility of being equally valid. It’s easy to become blinded to anything outside of our experience. It can be easy to expect the worst, and by expecting it, summon it into our lives. (And we might not even realize we’re doing this, because it might not feel like expecting the worst; it might simply feel like maintaining the status quo.)
We act based on what we know. So when we wish to change, we often must change not only what we are doing but also what we believe to be true. We must question what we believe to be within the range of possibilities for ourselves.
I believe in our capacity to change with an almost desperate fierceness. I have to believe in it that way because I’m right in the middle of it, and it’s hard, and I don’t want to falter in my resolve. I often feel like I’m working five times as hard as usual. This process rinses and repeats, often from the tiniest stimulus: how do I feel? where is that feeling coming from? is there a way I can think about this differently? is this part of the new me or the old me, the new world view or the old one? if it’s the old one, can I let it go? how can I use this to open more to the world?
It is quiet work. For the most part, the outside world remains unaware that it is happening. Sometimes a friend offers me a helpful hand. Sometimes that help is a distraction, the space to laugh at it all, or just the reminder, “Take some downtime, Amy.” Because while it may be quiet work, it is also tiring, making myself new.
But I’ll let you in on a secret. My imagination is working, and I can picture it now: where I want to go. Where I am going. And who I’m going to be. There was always that part of me imagining what I secretly wanted but thought could never happen. Only now I believe in it. That belief makes it almost close enough to touch. (Maybe I’m already touching.)
Whatever it is I’m doing, it’s no longer a comfortable suffering. Instead it’s something that reminds me what it feels like to be alive.
The Practical Free Spirit 
Yes! Getting comfortable in suffering is such an easy trap to fall into. It can end up feeling virtuous (If I just endure, if I can just handle these things, then someday everything will be great again, and my perseverance will have been essential to that outcome), The suffering is known, and you can figure out how to bear it, and once you do, well why put it down? You can handle it after all, you have been, for years.
Of course once one gets to the point where one lets it go, all of a sudden it becomes so hard to understand how one was willing to carry it for so long in the first place. It’s something about myself I’ve had to learn to watch for, since I’m willing apparently willing to suffer to accomplish things, and while that can be powerful in some situations, it doesn’t actually help in many cases. I think I understand a number of those cases now and watch out for them more. 🙂
So often I feel that we’re in the same place…busy sculpting who we want to be, the life we want to have, the world we want to inhabit. And it can be exhausting work…but as you say at the end, it’s also exhilarating. I worked towards one dream for so long that it’s taken me a while to realize that there are new dreams and new places to go! I’m finally able to imagine concretely what those dreams look like. At this point, I can almost taste and smell them. That keeps me moving forward and assures me I’m on the right track!
This comes up often in my study of History. Hindsight gives amazing clarity sometimes to decisions that were full of uncertainty when they happened and simply didn’t think of things that today we take for granted as obvious.
An example that came up today: would Southerners determined to preserve their social and economic way of life had been so willing to secede if they could have imagined 100 years of sharecropping, segregation, and Jim Crow? They could only imagine two possibilities: the way things were and a their idea of a nightmare future.