Giving up happiness and becoming Alive — words on “pain”.
We’re complex things.
We have relationships to fulfil, jobs to carry out, a career to progress, contentment to chase and sometimes, the somewhat exhausting task of making sure we meet the criteria of being a good, successful and righteous human.
It’s all a great theatrical dance we play. Trying to be who and what we think is right. Yet no matter the achievement, accolade, thing, experience — there is always more to discover, gain, fulfil. Exciting or exhausting, we decide.
For me, there is a frequent yearning to escape the matrix of society. To escape the conceptual, categorical black and white way of the world. To escape the scattered tasks, thinking, things. To escape the perpetual, endless things I need to do, say, have, be.
To return back to what I am — a primal animal.
With nothing but a need to be fed, warm and present to right now.
Where there’s nothing to do, nowhere to be — that state where nothing needs to change.
Where just watching the rain fall, my breath rise, the clouds move, people walk — is entirely, enough.
That centred, anchored stillness within the franticness of everything going on. All and everything, slow and still, yet fast and endless.
I love running in the mountains. I love lifting weights that don’t care about my feelings. I love experiencing everything that comes with it.
The tiredness, the discomfort, the pain, the elation, the energy, the euphoria, the resistance, the emotion, the ache, the depths of the low spots and the heights of the satisfaction.
It doesn’t make me feel alive, it makes life feel centred.
There is a way of being that we’re taught.
It’s that we can control our feelings, we shouldn’t have feelings and if we do, the only one we should have is happiness.
Fleeting happiness. That thing that comes and goes as does the rain. The thing that peaks and troughs without all that much conscious control. That thing that we want so badly we make it impossible to ever have.
We’re sold it. Do this, buy this, have this, achieve this, experience this — and then, only then, you will be happy. Only then will you have a momentary good feeling until you have to return to the depths of trudging along in life until you’ve earned the moment again.
This might be the way of being. This might be the norm. But I couldn’t feel more strongly about entirely refusing to accept this is how life needs to be.
Fleeting, momentary happiness although acutely attractive to my mind, creates an unease in me. An unease of ignoring the knowing that there is more.
How confusing though. We live comfortable lives. Most of us fortunate souls — have houses, heated to the temperature we like, we don’t have to experience any physical discomfort thanks to cars, shops, and the rest of the conveniences. Yet most of us in this bracket are probably disproportionately uncomfortable with our lives.
Discontented, disconnected and a poor ability to be ok with uncomfortable feelings.
Seldom in our bodies, endlessly in our heads.
Physical discomfort is a great mirror of our own self discovery.
When we experience pain, we get to meet ourselves, head first.
The surface outer layer of life “stuff” suddenly becomes so frustratingly unimportant, and an experience of presence, right now — becomes enticing, it becomes enough.
We stop thinking. We stop figuring out. We stop analysing. We stop forcing. We stop controlling. We stop planning. We stop judging.
We start completely being.
Although uncomfortable, although the mind sometimes makes it seem like a struggle full of thoughts like “I can’t”, “I’m not good enough”, “It’s too hard”.. when we go beyond these, we see that regardless of what the mind wants to do, doesn’t want to do, regardless of the dislike of these physical sensations and feelings, they’re ok.
We can experience them. We can handle them.
I know so many people, me being one of them — who is ever increasingly pulled and drawn to just Being in nature.
I can’t help but conceive that this is largely due to the above.
We’re broken down to our rawest form, the endless self-measuring, self-improvement and trying to mentally work out this “life” thing we have to do.. stops, and we’re back to everything, just being — enough.
We’re out of our heads and we become everywhere.
A couple of days ago I went Wild Camping in the Lake District, just me and my best companion, Pig.
I’ve never done it before. Always wanted to, but equally always been filled with “other stuff to do”, fear, self-doubt, blah blah.
I bought the kit. Stuffed my backpack. Off I went.
I hiked up near to the summit, the weight of the heavy pack creating a good force to fight against. Excitement, fear, burny legs, the rest.
A clear evening, the sun setting over the western mountains in the lakes, the sound of the birds doing what birds do, sheep trodding along.
I pitched up, made my shelter, watched the sunset, cooked some questionable dinner that my dog ate half of, put on many layers, and some more, retreated to my sleeping bag and 3 coats, snuggled my dog and lay there for 8 hours till the sun lit up the earth.
On the verge of shivering, alone on a mountain under the night sky, increasing wind hitting the side of my tent, yet completely full with an utter sene of — yes.
Light sleep, waking every hour, eventually 5:30am rolled around and the full-yellow moon lit up the top of the fell, and a pink hue spread across the base of the sky. Frost covered my tent, that spiky, bone-numbing cold wind relentlessly doing its job. Happy, smiling, laughing — no. But a deep, anchored contentness. The latter being permanent, the former being fleeting. Yet we chase the former, and disregard the latter, and end up lacking both.
After getting up and out to watch the sunrise, my hands going numb, I headed back to the wind protected little tent and tried to warm up. Trying to steal Pig’s heat. My hands eventually warmed, I got back out, the sun now out, shining, providing some well appreciated heat. Hunger spread through my belly, but I had no snacks. I decided it was time to pack away.
Because who doesn’t love putting a sleeping bag back in it’s bag. Bag’s packed, sun now fully shining, I headed down back to my car. Warming up as I walked, ready for food, appreciating the shadows turning light.
This experience, alike to ultrarunning, training, general being outdoors being a human — for me, is so meaningful.
I think we confuse being ok with being comfortable and being happy with being content.
In this 14 hour escapade I experienced a lifetime of feelings. Awe, connection, peace, tiredness, coldness, fear, hunger, slight misery, happiness, appreciation.
And that’s the beauty of these experiences, of these moments where we come back to the pure, simplicity of being an animal.
These feelings aren’t to be avoided, to be fretted.
These feelings aren’t to be made a goal.
To experience our feelings flux with the force of nature, and to learn and see that they don’t really matter, for we have very little say in them.
I feel a lot of this way of being we’re taught, as I mentioned, is to only be allowed to experience happiness.
Which makes all the other feelings wrong.
It also makes experiences where we don’t just feel “happy”, invalid and pointless. It makes us avoid and stay away from anything where we’ll feel slightly uncomfortable. It makes us live a very protected and sheltered life trying to micromanage everything and experiencing nothing valuable.
But the goal isn’t happiness.
It’s the same as sadness, fear, insecurity — all them feelings that come and go.
Beneath the ever-changing flux of these feelings, discomfort, physical sensations there is something that doesn’t change.
The “thing”, awareness — that sees and watches it all just happen. What we really are, not our thoughts, our feelings.
For me, when these feelings are magnified, such as when running an ultramarathon, camping on a mountain, getting in cold water or trying to win against a barbell that’s trying to pummel my bones to the floor — the choice between ease and pain becomes so obvious.
If I fight these feelings, try to change them, try to stop them, try to avoid them — I struggle, I suffer and they grow louder and more aggressive. I eventually give up, quit and conclude that I have no willpower or abilities.
Yet if I let them be there, watch them come and go, keep anchored in being where my feet are, sure — there’s discomfort, but it’s not an exhausting fight. Sure it hurts, but it’s ok. I’m not laughing with endless happiness, but that doesn’t mean I’m not ok.
Moments where this line becomes obvious, are important to recognise, at least for me to see the significant choice I have everyday to fight with the flow of life, my mind and all else — or to just let it all happen and surrender control to something which I have no control over anyway.
In a world where our attention is scattered with fast phones, instant comfort, endless choice, infinite to-do lists —
Return back to being an animal who experiences discomfort regularly.
But for whom discomfort isn’t a problem. It’s just a feeling, a sensation.
To me, there appears to be an infinite of things to discover and experience, whilst at the same time — nothing more than the simple yet alarming reminder to just be present, here, where your feet are.
And perhaps there is no life to run away from.
Because there is nowhere to go to.. other than right now.
(:
Watch my latest YouTube video where I document this experience & more words on why.
