Endurance…and Learning Lessons

‘If it’s endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining.’

            —Marcus Aurelius

Enduring something, whatever it may be, sounds like a hardship to our modern ears. With thoughts of ‘bearing, suffered, put up with,’ these are not situations of activities we cheerfully welcome into our lives. No one wants to endure something they don’t like. Life, however, has other ideas that probably do not coincide with the ‘plan’ we have for how we want to live our lives. Bear in mind, though, that these situations we need to endure are a matter of perspective. Verbally, we use the verb ‘to endure’ for many situations, from the plight of the Holocaust survivors, prisoners-of-war, victims of natural disasters, to being placed on ‘hold’ for a lengthy time, the local store not having what we need at that moment, or needing to wait for our car to be serviced. Obviously, the second group of situations to ‘endure’ do not have the gravity or consequential aftermath of the first. Yet, for some reason, ‘to endure’ is used for both. Perspective? Most certainly. Life moves quickly, and we have adapted to moving quickly with it. A roadblock in our intended path produces tension in our lives, and we react to it, telling friends and family how tough our day was due to…. Yes, it was an inconvenience, completely out of our control, yet we react to it as if the world were coming to an end, and that it happened specifically to test us.

What happens if we decide to take life a little slower, at least mentally and emotionally, deciding to really look at each little inconvenience for what it actually is, what is actually happening, realizing it is not in our control, and treating it as such. Okay, this happened. Or that happened. Did I create this? No. It just happened, and now I need to decide how to react, to see how it really affects my life, and make the appropriate decision for the best outcome. That may be to do something on another day, or at another time. Or in the case of something more serious, a car accident, for example, making sure everyone is unhurt, or get the medical attention they need, and then going about taking the steps to get things fixed and made right, so that we can all continue living our lives as best we can. Life presents myriad situations that trouble us, disturb our preferred path, cause us pain, and create anguish about the mistake, misjudgement, the trial we now face. In so many cases, we hold on to the pain, however fleeting it may have been, and recant the tale of our woes to any who will listen. Why? Because the pain caused gives us a cause; an excuse to hold on to a former image of our lives, now in jeopardy of being exposed as an image and not the reality, and this scares us. What if, instead of holding on to old, now-useless images of who we might have seen ourselves to be, we look at these incidents as lessons. Lessons of different ways to respond, of a completely contrasting way to look at our life and what is occurring in it.

What might a lesson look like? Or what might it portend? As an impatient person myself, this might look like needing to take the time to understand what another is trying to communicate, in their own, not-like-mine, fashion, slowing down the pace of the interaction and really trying to see the pictures they are verbally creating in a way that we understand one another and see where the other is leading us. What would be the result? That we understood what we both wanted, agreed to certain things, not to others, and to create a result that pleased us both and allowed us to move on to the next situation. In the moment, the hardest thing to remember is the fact that there is another person in front of you, who has prepared for this moment as much as you have, has as much at stake as you, and wants what he or she wants. Actually listening, as opposed to simply hearing, and then moving on with your own train of thought, is the key to this interaction. Listening, and letting it affect you, makes all the difference in the world. That tiny little act of taking the time to listen, really listen, to someone, even if you may disagree with what is being said, is crucial. This will open your mind to things you may not have thought of, and other possibilities that were beyond your view of the world. It is just that little, tiny possibility of finally seeing another’s point-of-view that is the first step to changing trials and tribulations into lessons that we take with us, that make us better human beings, and open new worlds to us; worlds we sometimes never knew existed.