“Life is the dancer and you are the dance.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
I’ve been spending a lot of time in the car over the past week. As a one car family, we are always navigating schedules to make sure everyone gets where they need to be and sometimes that turns into a lot of driving for me.
One thing I do to make the role of chauffeur more enjoyable is to listen to the radio. Because my musical tastes are fairly eclectic, I am often inclined to change the station in search of a “better” song. For some reason, my channel-changing has gotten under my four year-old’s skin. So now, whenever I change the station, she demands that I stop and leave the dial right where it is.
Her request for musical consistency and my urge to constantly channel surf for something “better” to listen to, has me thinking a lot about our aversions and why we are so apt to immediately push away things we don’t like or that make us uncomfortable.
In our collective culture there is a notion that life should always “feel good.” This is an illusion that sets many of us up to stay stuck in behaviors and situations that stifle our growth. Pushing away discomfort only temporarily forces it out of the sphere of perception. Discomfort often serves a purpose and it will inevitably continue to arise in one situation or another until we can look it squarely in the face.
What I’m coming to understand as I bring a sense of curiosity to my own experiences of discomfort, is my aversions have a whole heck of a lot to teach me. They actually provide a wealth of information, if I take the time to explore them. When I can be present and patient with what is arising within me, I’m much more likely to gain understanding of myself, others, and potentially find resolutions that are more lasting and authentic.
If I can refrain from the desire to push away what doesn’t feel good and give it some inquiry, I’m left with questions like: Why is this discomfort arising in me? Is it really about this moment or another? Is this a call for healing? Do I need to extend compassion to myself or someone else right now?
When we forgo inquiry for the sake of avoidance, we miss opportunities to deeply tune into ourselves. Perhaps we do need to respond to discomfort with action, but there is a distinct difference between the knee jerk reaction of avoidance and a thoughtful response that comes from understanding the nuances of an aversion.
Life is going to spin tunes we don’t like from time to time. The question is whether we can stay present and not be so quick to change the station. We can be certain, with time and a commitment to presence, the song we disliked will end and a new song will begin – one we actually might have missed had we been anywhere but tuned into the here and now.