I sob quietly as I maneuver through the heavy morning traffic. It’s a crisp, clear, cool day, and I’m listening to world news on the local NPR station.
The news is nothing new- a divided country, terror at home and abroad, children suffering for the decisions of old men they’ll never know exist. What sends me over the edge is a special interest piece, a spot about war veterans fighting their PTSD with long hiking trips. It’s a positive story with a happy ending, and I cry through most of it.
The crying is nothing new either; I don’t know precisely why I’m crying, but I’m long past the point in my life where I try to stop the tears. (For a more eloquent example of how to accept tears as they come, please read this short blog post- Weeping Creates a River– I came across it about a year ago, and it resonated incredibly deeply with me.)
There was a time when this sudden flood of emotion overwhelmed me, terrified me, stopped me in my tracks and held me hostage- every single time it washed over me. There was a time when an NPR spot about a baseball game left me unable to see the road through my tears (Why?! I don’t even like baseball!). There was a time when every single meltdown left me confused and angry. This morning, however, the tears slip sedately down my cheeks. Traffic remains visible, and I do myself a favor and turn the radio off. My mind embraces the silence, and I follow my thoughts where they lead.
Not for the first time, my thoughts drift all the way back to Death Valley.
I hit Death Valley back in…. good grief, back in March. I’d just come from San Diego, via Tucson, Phoenix, and my World of Beer Application. The very last stop I made before venturing back out into the wilderness was Scottsdale, a suburb of Phoenix, where I spent a long Easter weekend with friends from home. It was a wonderfully relaxing weekend; just what I needed after the whirlwind that was my World of Beer Application process. (A million, billion thank you’s Alex and Liz.)
After this respite, I made my way back to California. I was due in the small town of Aptos, just outside of Santa Cruz, for that farm-sitting gig in a couple days, and I had decided to drive the extra 4 hours to include Death Valley National Park in my trip so that I could try to catch the tail end of the El Niño induced super bloom there.
I did catch the tail end of the bloom- it took stopping my car along the road literally dozens of times, it took bending down and really looking, but I found some incredible desert flowers. And I even got a peek of the show at its height up at the higher elevations.
But even though I went to Death Valley for the flowers, my trip into our country’s largest designated ‘wilderness’ didn’t really end up being about the flowers. Death Valley was where everything kind of came together for me mentally.
For months I had been ruminating on the idea of pain, and the suffering that accompanies it. I had been thinking about the ways that we avoid emotional pain- mainly by distancing ourselves from others, hiding ourselves and hoping that no one figures out that we’re as vulnerable as they are.
… Really though, now that I think about it, this is something I had been pondering for years. I can vividly remember the first time I had a mini epiphany about the merits of embracing versus avoiding pain.
…. So, I love to go barefoot, I have my entire life. Growing up out in the country will do that to a girl. By the time I was eleven, however, my family had moved into town, and for the first time in my life my poor little feet had to face the hot summer pavement on a regular basis. It was an early summer day, and all I wanted to do was dash across the street to my friend’s house. And I remember standing there on the edge of our porch, vacillating between dipping back inside for shoes, or making a break for the relief of the yard across the street. School had only recently let out, and my feet weren’t yet the tough, callused things that I knew they would be by the end of the summer.
As I stood there, I reasoned that if I put shoes on for that trip, it was going to be that much longer before they got tough enough for the heat not to matter. And in that moment, it hit me- that’s the point. The longer I tried to avoid the pain, the longer the pain would be an issue. And so (after looking both ways) I dashed across that street barefoot.
Since then, I have made an effort to go barefoot whenever I can. And I believe in pushing my feet, even when it hurts, so that they can become tougher so that I can go barefoot more often.
For this reason, all along my trip I went on barefoot hikes. And sometimes it was amazing- at White Sands in New Mexico, the sand was so soft it literally made me laugh out loud. In Big Bend in south Texas, I abandoned my flip flops for what I thought was a half mile walk along a metal board walk that ended up being a very painful trip across some very sharp rocks. And I experienced every bit of that pain.
In Death Valley, there was another little half mile hike, and it’s Death Valley, so it’s all volcanic gravel of varying consistencies. But this one wasn’t so bad, because the gravel was deep. So, barefoot I went, and by the top, between the heat and the rocks and the fact that I’d been barefoot all day so my feet were a bit tender, it hurt.
But this time when I started feeling that pain, I was thinking about what my new friend the physicist and I had been talking about. We had been discussing feeling pain versus experiencing distress, and the fact that while pain is inevitable, distress is a byproduct of the human tendency to worry unnecessarily, and to dwell on all of the things that we can’t control. Then I thought about what Ted from Big Bend said about releasing pain instead of clinging to it. And I thought about reality- what was really happening to my feet when I felt pain? I wasn’t breaking the skin, there was no blood, it wasn’t hot enough to burn them (cause a blister). So what was the purpose of feeling the pain? To find my limits, to stop me before I did break the skin or cause a real burn. And if that’s the only real purpose for the pain, why did I need to experience it so deeply if I knew my feet were safe?
So, I let go of the pain. And the walking was easy. I felt what was happening, and kept track of the physical status in regards to real harm, but then I let go of it, moment to moment. …
Despite the baking sun, and the rough ground, I sat for a while at the top of the crater I had just climbed past and pondered the things that had been whirling in my head for the past couple months.
My metaphor about going barefoot isn’t a perfect one- the goal of me being emotionally vulnerable is never so that I can become emotionally callused. Instead, the ‘calluses’ on my spirit are lessons learned. With that in mind, I pondered the difference between pain and suffering, and the choices we all have, every moment, that shape the types of lives we lead. I knew I was capable of happiness. I knew that, given the right circumstances, happiness could find me- it had found me.
But perhaps there’s more. Pain is unavoidable. This we know. And so often, when we find ourselves in pain, we just put our heads down and slog through it, waiting for happiness to return. But what if there are other options? What if, every time we confront pain, we remember that pain is transformative, an opportunity for growth? That suffering is optional, a choice we sometimes make by not choosing?
And then I thought some more, and I realized- there’s more to this metaphor than just learning how to release unnecessary pain. Just as moving along a trail barefoot requires awareness, requires you to slow down and be more mindful of each step, perhaps living a life where you don’t avoid every possibility of pain helps you be more present? Walking along a trail barefoot helps me remember to really see what is around me. Perhaps living without our masks, without the preconceived notion that all pain is bad, helps us be more aware, more mindful of the world around us, and more mindful of others and their emotions.
Then, to take it just a step further, perhaps releasing our inherent, irrational fear of pain helps us be better friends. Instead of worrying ourselves when we see our friends making decisions that we think will so clearly end up causing them pain, we can be happy for them at a time when they are happy. And we can sit with them when they are in pain, and learn with them from that pain, instead of just trying to help them forget it.
… All of these remembered thoughts went through my head as I escaped the traffic the other morning and started scooping up pooches to take them on a hike. I still get sad. I still cry, sometimes a lot. In fact, pretty much every single one of my blog posts has been washed in my tears. But these days, I don’t stay sad. Generally, I choose to let go of pain, rather than cling to it. Learning how to do this- how to accept that pain exists, how to really feel that pain, and then how to not dwell on that pain- has been incredibly freeing.
That said, I’ve been wearing my shoes a lot more lately. Until this past weekend, it hadn’t rained in months in California, and there are a lot of little tiny thorns out there. And after I’d dug, oh I dunno, maybe the sixth one out of my foot, I realized maybe I was being a bit silly- sure some pain is inevitable, but did I really need to be asking for it?
So perhaps there’s a middle ground.
I’m going to keep looking for it.
travelgrowrepeat 