Pain is real – something I was reminded of when I was flipping through a desk calendar.
A friend of mine purchased a calendar for me last year – filled with quotations from Eckhart Tolle, the author of the best-selling book The Power of Now.
Each month is filled with beautiful photography of natural landscapes, but more importantly an inspirational passage from the widely respected teacher regarding how living in the “Now” is the truest path to happiness and enlightenment. If you have the chance, the book is worth the read.
I was particularly moved by October’s excerpt.
“The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life. The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is.”
Heavy, huh? In no way do I believe that Tolle is suggesting that pain in not real or unwarranted – pain is real. But many times the pain continues and festers without our hearts and minds because of that “unconscious resistance” to accept reality.
Regardless of your place in this world, no one can escape the unexpected problems and turmoils which arise as we journey through life. Many times there is no rhyme or reason to the uncomfortable situations we often find ourselves in, and accepting and relinquishing the internal pain we’re carrying around seems an impossibility.
But I can speak from experience when I tell you that the longer you dismiss that pain in real, the more it will continue to invade each and every part of your world. Acceptance is never easy for it requires admissions and emotions which seem easier to simply deny.
Broadway and television star Kristin Chenoweth sings:
I wanna do something that matters
Say something different
Something that sets the whole world on its ear
I wanna do something better
With the time I’ve been given
I wanna try, to touch a few hearts in this life
Leave nothing less
Than something that says, I was here
Pain is real, there’s no denying that. But allowing that pain to walk with us throughout our lives will only make living that much more difficult. As the song says do something better with the time you’ve been given, so people will always remember you were here.
