The storms of life can feel so overwhelming, that whether or not you’d actually find the strength and motivation to end your life… the truth is you’d rather just cease to exist, cease to live in the unending storm… Over the years I’ve met many people in this predicament, and have at times discovered in myself a similar narrative. It is simply one response to the downs of life. It isn’t abnormal. It’s an indication of the level of pain we’re experiencing.
There is not one thing that works for everyone in their pain, and some feel like nothing works. We all have different sources of pain. Some have chronic physical pain that prevent us from doing what we wish we could to care for ourselves or to simply live. Others have deep emotional pain they cannot shut down. Some have both. There is no 100% solution, and ‘life is pain’ as they said in Princess Bride. Most religions recognize that suffering is inevitable.
Generally, if we can find relief or help, it comes in a form of small ‘parts.’ This helps a little, that helps a little, or for a time…
So while there is no one solution there are things that help, in part. One small part of life we could all use is a pacer.
At a minimum, we need support when we are in pain. Consider the following…
A short time ago I was watching the Leadville 100. A race 100 miles long, running at elevations between 9500 and 12500 feet. It can last for just under 16 hours of running for the pros (who average no more than a 9+ mile per hour - for 100 miles while gaining almost 16K in elevation), to over 30 hours for those just struggling to finish. This year you had to run by yourself for the first 72 miles of the race, through the weather, through the dark, through the pain. A runner’s pacer couldn’t join them until mile marker 72.
The official clock shuts off 30 hours after it starts. It’s 100 miles of torture as far as I’m concerned — and ANYONE who finishes the race wins. This race might be a helpful metaphor for life.
As I watched people cross the finish line approaching the 30 hour mark, I saw those who had support from family or a friend, who while exhausted, found strength in this support. I also saw others almost falling and stumbling as they approached the finish line…alone…nothing left to give. Each painful step they took, they barely held themselves up with their arms and hiking poles. The last woman to finish before the 30 hour mark, barely made it and collapsed desperate for help as soon as she was over the line. She ran alone, tortured, but still if there hadn’t been help for her as she crossed who knows what would have happened even then. When we collapse we need others to surround us.
When we run the race of life, it’s clear that it helps to have pacers running with us, telling us we can make it. One of the runners shared about how at the 50 mile mark, after ascending thousands of feet, then descending, and now having to turn and run it all in reverse, there were people saying, ‘we have shuttles if you’re done.’ Instead of, ‘You can do this!’ ‘You’re amazing!’ ‘You’re halfway there!!!’
Some relationships, some connections suck the life out of us. The negative energy takes whatever we have left and sucks it out like the dementors in Harry Potter’s world.
We all need others to tell us we can do it. Neuroscience and interpersonal neurobiology studies are revealing how we need connection to survive down to the very cellular level of life.
But we don’t always have others in the race with us, and the dementors around us are many. When we can’t find a reason to go on, when we don’t have the support of others, or worse yet, when others suck the life out of us what do we do?
Everyone who finished the Leadville 100 was a winner. I don’t care if they were first place or crossed after the clock stopped, running in after all had left the finish line. To finish this race they had to believe in themselves and what I would call their ‘beauty.’
When there’s no one who believes in us, we have to believe in ourselves. We have to believe in what I refer to as our beauty—something inherent to every human born, male, female, young or old. We all have beauty. Whether it’s manifested in our mind’s ability to do amazing physical feats, or in simply finding the strength to try again because we believe we have something to offer a world that tells us we have nothing to give.
As an incredibly discouraged friend, suffering from chronic pain said to me the other day… why? why am I here? what’s the point? To me that was like asking if I wanted to live in a world without flowers. He was a flower, suffering and yet surviving, still here, displaying a heart for connection, for life, even though terribly beaten down. To me, watching him live, is like seeing a flower blooming in the most unexpected of places, whether that’s with hardly any soil on a rock in the high country, or forcing it’s way through the cement in the dirt, grime, and smog of the dirtiest city on earth. I don’t really want to live in a world without flowers. And someone to me, who is persevering against all odds reflects a beauty that our world needs. That I need.
Some are able to find a reason to persevere because of their faith, or spirituality, or believe they need to live for a friend or family member. But when no reasons seems to exist, perhaps it might help a little to realize that our world needs flowers. Picture a world without them. I can’t. Just as I cannot picture the world without you.