Three practices for getting through hard times

A client wrote to ask about the difficulties in the world right now.

How can people figure out how to plan, she wondered – professionally or otherwise – when so much is uncertain?

This client has a friend who works for immigrant rights in the United States.

This field will be greatly impacted by the coming Presidential elections.

How can this friend remain steady, my client wondered, when her livelihood and much of what she cares about is at stake?

These three practices help me to get through tough times.

I’d be delighted to hear your thoughts on them, and to hear your approach to viewing difficulty in life.

1. Realize that you can’t control events. You can only control your reaction to them.
   • If you wait for all events and people to be pleasing to you in order to be pleased, you’ll be waiting forever. Even if everything did align perfectly for you, it would do so only briefly, and then there would be slippage. Rev WonGong So of the Won-Buddhist Temple in NC reminds practitioners that if one gets one’s way 60% of the time in a world of billions of people, one is lucky. If you decide that you’re here to learn and every situation gives you a chance to grow, you may start to find unforeseen difficulties less harmful.
2. Know that good things aren’t all good, and bad things aren’t all bad.
   1. Following from the above, if you can grow from every situation, then perhaps the situation is not all ‘bad.’ There’s an exercise in the Centered Career workbook that’s inspired by the Buddhist story of the farmer’s son. Life is complex, and the overall story of creation is much bigger than each of our unique points of view allows us to perceive. If you think honestly about something (or someone) in your life that you thought was wonderful, inevitably, that person or thing has or will let you down in some way. Likewise, you probably learned something valuable from a circumstance that you wouldn’t have wished for if given the chance to avoid it.
3. Understand that pain is a great teacher.
   1. It follows that pain can be a great teacher, if we choose to listen to its difficult lessons. Anything really horrible that you’ve been through has probably taught you something deep and true about life. If you were to live a life without challenges or suffering, you would be insufferable. Think about it: do you want to hang out with someone who is perfect, or thinks he or she is perfect? Or would you rather spend time with someone who has been through a lot, and is humble? You might feel more confident about life’s curveballs if you decide that no matter what life throws at you, you will ask yourself: what am I meant to understand from this situation? And tell yourself: No matter what happens, I’ll be OK. This will give you courage in difficult times if you choose to believe it.

Every day brings new people and situations to your life.

On any given day, the earth could shake beneath your feet and all that you know could be swallowed in the abyss. A stranger or a loved one could harm you, or could be hurt in front of you. There are horrible fires in California, and Australia suffered massive wildfires recently, too. We’re living in a pandemic in a time of massive economic and social change. None of these circumstances is easy to live with.

To make sense of things I look to nature, and a quick glance at the forest tells me that predators kill to eat every day, and that earthquakes and fires are part of life’s order. You can’t stop any of it from happening and things wouldn’t make sense if you could (remember the other 8 billion people. It’d get pretty tricky if we could all control events).

Life is terminal, and if you live long enough you’ll end up losing everything along the way.

You can’t control much of what happens at all.

All that you can control is your reaction to the events in your life.

You can decide that nothing is all good and nothing is all bad, and you can dedicate yourself to learning from hard times and from expecting less of the good.

Remember: pain can bring gifts of depth and compassion, and nothing and no one is ever perfect (you don’t need to be, either.)