Breaking the cycle

The last thing anyone wants when they are not feeling good is to do something uncomfortable.

But if you are already uncomfortable you need to change something, so it's worth a little more discomfort if that would help.

Most people wouldn't balk at taking some nasty tasting medicine if they thought it would help, but that is a modern way of dealing with our problems. Swallow a magic pill and life will improve.

If you have an infection, or broken bone, or ulcer, that is very true.

But what if you have a sad soul, or dispirited spirit, or feel betrayed? Any pill you take for that is probably only dulling the feeling and giving it time to dig in deep enough that you can ignore it.

You can fake happiness with inane action. Clean the house at a madcap pace. Run fifteen miles a day. Drink until you fall over. Sleep perchance to dream of better things 23 hours a day. Eat until you are too large to fit in your clothes. Surround yourself with so many people you have no time for yourself.

Any of those might be easier than the discomfort of doing something new to really change things.

Sometimes I've found myself breaking one cycle only to fall into another. When I quit smoking, I ate! Now I need to stop medicating with food.

But when I was ineffably lonely I went out and found some people who like to do things I like and that has turned out to be a wonderful thing. It wasn't at first. I was really scared the first time I showed up at a restaurant to meet people I didn't know, but I kept it up long enough to become comfortable and have met some new kindred spirits because of it.

The same goes with volunteering. I volunteered at a hospital, at a YWCA daycare and an airplane museum before I remembered how much I like to volunteer in an elementary school library.

Maybe if you look at life as an adventure it will give you the courage to do somethings that feel uncomfortable so you can find the things you love that you didn't know you loved.