If you have ever lived, you know life is suffering. We are condemned with the self-consciousness of our own mortality. There are many good moments in life, as well as many horrific. Every being suffers. We will never make it out alive. We’re all in. Now confronted with this, what can we do?
We cannot stop suffering from occurring. Whenever life seems good, it can turn around in just a matter of seconds. It is one visit from the doctor; one message saying a loved one has died, away. This fact, the unpredictability of chaos inside order, is beautifully illustrated by the yin-yang sign. It is a circle with a line in the middle, having two sides circling each other. White illustrates the known and order, and black illustrates the unknown and chaos. Now in the white part, there is a black dot. This black dot implies the always present, unpredictable chaos. At any moment, life can turn from good to bad. This also works the other way around: there is a white dot inside the black one, implying that whenever you are in a bad situation, life can become better. You are not doomed to stay in the dark forever.
The best place to live is in the middle, one foot in the known, the other in the unknown. This way you still have steady ground to stand on while you also explore the territory of the unknown. “Well,” you ask, “why would I want to have one foot in the unknown and not both in the known? Isn’t it much safer in the known?”
The answer is yes and no. On the one hand, you could argue that it is very safe in the known territory with as little danger as possible. We experience little to no surprise and everything tends to move in a known routine. When you stick in the known, however, you undergo little to no growth. In the known, you build a shell around yourself. Staying safe, in your shell, is a quick path to misery. There are no goals you would like to achieve, at least no big ones because this would cause too much discomfort.
It is the striving of making yourself, and thereby the world, better, which makes life worth living.
It is in the unknown where growth takes place. It is going out of your own shell, being vulnerable, where you can experience growth and develop a bigger shell where, in turn, you also grow out of. The unknown holds many surprises and probable dangers you might encounter. It is voluntarily signing up for danger and suffering. It is in that darkness where your biggest fears are, but you go there, nonetheless.
This way we are constantly evolving into something better, we are constantly overcoming fear to make ourselves and thereby the world a better place.
The consequence of not going into that darkness at all is way more catastrophic. You will carry a burden with you that you have never dared to look in the eyes. This burden remains untouched by you and will grow with time until you have scraped the courage together to face it. It is the beautiful analogy of night and day, where we must first go through the darkness before the sun will rise again. In the same way, we must go into the dark, unknown territories of our minds and our life before we can thrive and have meaning.
Have the courage to be vulnerable, step voluntarily into the unknown, and face your burdens with your eyes wide open. Beat your burdens and grow as a person. Now that you have grown as a person you will be able to change the environment around you for the better. Your suffering has served a greater good.
The order you create by going voluntarily into chaos has a tremendously bigger extent than the suffering you experienced going through it. This suffering will not go unseen, and suffering is still hard, but this time suffering had a reason: making everything a little bit better. And that is something to live for.
Interesting post Stan! Make me wonder if I have actually been living in my comfort zones all of this time 😀