It’s the middle of the summer in the desert Southwest. Temperatures are upwards of 115 degrees F – middle of the day.
And where am I standing?
I’m standing at the bottom of a mountain. If I choose to run or walk up the mountain, it’s 1/2 of a mile in each direction. One half mile up – one half mile down.
But this isn’t a normal, flat, easy route.
This route, path, or whatever you want to call it, is rocky. It’s filled with loose rocks, boulders, pits, and loose sand that makes any workout hard. Not just regular hard but painstakingly hard. It is the path of life.
PAINstakingly hard.
That’s why I’m there.
I’m getting ready to run up this hill, in the heat, alone on my own. It is the highlight of my day. I love it, I look forward to it and I am the only person who likely visits this mountain during the day, which confirms to me one thing:
Pain is not for everyone.
And… to be better than the majority, you have to do things that the majority aren’t willing to do.
When you are in pain, you see everything through a different lens. Pain can bring a noise that brings an influx of thoughts to your head. Memories hit hard. Pain feels harder. Everything seems like it’s changing – but in reality, nothing has changed at all. You are becoming stronger.
You likely might feel isolated. You feel uneasy, you feel scared.
You go into survival mode – if you are me, you quietly withdraw from everyone around you and focus on what you have to do to survive. You take care of yourself. Deep down you wish others cared about you the way you care about others but you realize that you can’t make someone care or love for you.
Essentially, you move into the pain of acceptance.
Pain leads to change – slowly, over a period of time. During that change, you won’t realize things are different, but looking back, you’ll see drastic change, the difference between then and now. You don’t know that the moments that you survived will define you.
As you grow, things will always keep changing and there will always be a certain amount of pain associated with that. Perhaps you didn’t ask for so much pain; perhaps you didn’t ask for challenging circumstances.
But the thing is… you don’t always get what you want. Instead, you get what you need.
Sometimes, things fall apart to make space for better things to come into focus. Every story has an ending, but every ending will give birth to a new beginning. Eventually, looking back, things will make better sense.
You’ll ask yourself why you have to let things go…
You’ll want to know why you have to wait…
You’ll want to understand why things have to come to an end..
You might ask yourself why you never seem to be enough for the right person..
Eventually you will ask why you have to go through so much pain…
One day, everything will make more sense, and when that happens, you will realize that the pain you endured all happened for a reason.
That pain made you better as a person. It helped you grow, gain more tolerance, gain a better understanding of yourself, and it helped you see just how much fortitude you have deep within.
The days that were 113 degrees and your body felt like it was on fire as you sprinted up the mountain will teach you that you CAN do it. It’ll teach you that you are stronger than most others who can’t do what you are doing – especially in the middle of the day in the blazing heat.
You’ll realize that you have become wiser. You’ll understand more about yourself, you’ll see an inner fortitude that may have been blurry in the past.
One day, you will realize that you are grateful to all the people who let you go, who failed to show up for you, or who failed to show you the love that you so willingly and deeply gave them.
That pain will be the reason why you fight for your happiness, for a better life, and for other things you never dared had the courage to ask for before.
That pain made you a better person, it helped you grow yet humble you.
One day you will realize that everything you have been through leads you to where you are meant to be, and with the person you are meant to be with. Even if that person is yourself.
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