Adversity

Published on TheTropicalViking.com in February 2016

I have had this on my mind for a few days now and just need to get it out to see if it makes sense. Let’s call it a ponder chronicle.

In Swedish there is an expression where unpleasant surprises that bring awakening insights is referred to as receiving a “cold shower”. I’m sure the same or similar exists in English but can’t be bothered looking it up right now. After having experienced the first cold winter in about three years during a short visit to Sweden I felt as if I was constantly exposed to, if not cold showers, at least some icy drizzles. Ironically enough the drizzles seem to be just enough to be annoying as they would interrupt a sense of even flow in positive experiences and at the same time be a bit clogged out in their own flow to not entirely bucket over me as a call to arms. All they did was slowly filling up my cup with disappointment, a bitter flavour of life.

This eventually made me question if it was happening to me or if I was letting it happen to me. After some contemplation I realised that the feeling of disappointment would exist nowhere else but inside me, even if certain burdens are shared the feeling is individual, and so I must be the one creating it. I am the disappointment when it exists inside of me but since I am aware of it not having been there before then I know I am also the person without the disappointment. So in the same way that I have the ability to change for the worse, I have the ability to change for the better (regardless of which side of better or worse you want to place disappointment, I usually let it sit on the worse side, but that’s just me). 

We can empty the cup. This is often done more deliberately and very rarely happens without us taking to action. Filling the cup is done daily, perhaps unknowingly, through impressions we gather as we move along and we might have things put in there that we did not order or were aware of would have such a potent effect. Before we know it we might walk around with an omnipotent bitter taste that stains everything that comes in our way. If we do not pay attention to this, if we do not stop to taste the brew we have mixed together, we will grow accustomed to the bitterness and accept it as a natural part of life. This is why we must empty the cup, one way or the other every once in a while so that we have room to fill it with what is more balanced blend. To do this in practice I find a moment of solitude dedicated for contemplation and meditation to be a very effective method. Pouring it out in the gutter would also help but when it comes to my mind I haven’t found a way to do this yet. 

During contemplation the ever resonating “why” is bound to pass by at some point and we might try to find reason for what we have gone through. Since we are then thinking about things in hindsight, looking back at events, but doing so in the present the why is often placed into the aftermath and becomes part of the equation where we factor in the things we have learned or taken with us from the event. It is true that we become who we are as a result from what we experience but saying that we experience because we were to become who we are is like saying that the rain fell for the road to get wet. The rain fell because of gravity and that there was saturated humidity in the clouds, the road became wet because the rain fell on it and I did not slip on the wet pavement because I was supposed to learn a lesson not to run on slippery surfaces but I learned to be more careful because I slipped (Just to be clear, Mom I haven’t slipped nor run or any slippery surfaces, I’m fine). Saying that things happen because they were supposed to lead to something is a slippery slope (pun intended) and ends in the traditional deterministic argument that denies the concept of free will. I will let this slide (pun intended again) for now or we’ll spiral down the rabbit hole of causality and we can save that trip for later. 

So going back to the cold showers, the wake up calls and struggling through adversity. Perhaps the drizzles didn’t have a message embedded in their icy crystals, maybe the wake up call was not loud enough because there was nothing to wake up for and what if feeling like I was going against the grain had to do with the fact that I was looking in the wrong direction? To get an outlook on things can be great but as we move the perspective changes and if want to see the clear we must also change our point of view. With new perspectives comes new circumstances that we are dealt to deal with and so that is what we can do: deal with them, not against. Wishing for other circumstances or to play a different game is not going to change the current hand. The fruit of disappointment grows from roots of expectation and expectation is watered by desire, an idea of a will for something that we put a virtual value to. To allow oneself to gamble with expectation will either result in fulfilment or disappointment and the odds depend on how many of the determining factors we control. Our reaction of the outcome has nothing to do with the outcome itself. If the outcome is a universal truth, our reaction to it is a choice, just like the bitter flavour in the cup and it can be altered, avoided or adjusted to. 

In the end we will not be able to avoid a cold shower every once in a while but with time we learn how to clean ourselves in that icy water too. After all, if surprise is what exceeds expectation then with less expectation there is more room for surprise.