Strength in Challenges

What is it about challenges that make us stronger? You get beaten down enough after a while it stops hurting. You find an inner strength you forgot you had, that you haven't seen or felt in a long time if you're lucky, at least since the last time. Instinctive survival mechanism built into our DNA since our first iteration.
I find it thrilling. A rush like an eight-ball running through your veins. An oft forgotten wild night of fortuitous encounters with beautiful strangers in a series of dark nightclubs till sunrise and beyond. Heart races a few beats faster. Skin is flushed and tingles. Hair tingles. Headspace clearer than normal. Clarity. Like the moment just before death. The seconds just before the plane smashes to the ground.
And for what? All because a random series of events that arise out of nowhere to pose life's latest challenges to our momentary perfect life. We may be peaking. We may already be down. We may just be cruising. But for whatever the reason -- and that's a subject that can be debated for eons as it already has -- now we find ourselves in one of those all too common situations where we are yet again reminded of our humanity. Our fragility. Our vulnerability. The Godless moment. Our existentially purposeless existence come back to haunt us. Try as we might we can't shake them, no matter what they happen to be in those moments, these challenges; they seem to possess powers greater than we alone can muster.
And that's when it happens. A walk in fresh air or some sleep. Somehow the brain reintegrates, becomes bigger, big enough to encompass all that we've held in it before plus additional room for the acceptance of these new challenges. Voila along comes that strange sense of calm and confidence. Subtle but as if by magic. An overwhelming feeling of cool optimism wells up within not of our own making.
No matter what they say. No matter who says it. Let them come. Let it all come. We're over the shock now. Over the sadness. Over the tears and frustration. Over the guilt and shame and the why me. Over the pain of feeling the victim. Nothing can surprise us. It's a rare freedom. In the face of adversity when we find that primitive inner strength within we realize we are truly free. Fearless.
Just from the very fact that we are alive, in spite of all the bouts with impossible odds and aggravating challenges, obnoxious assholes who refuse to keep their promises or opinions to themselves, short sighted higher ups who don't see the value of what we might value the most in life, well meaning colleagues who don't see it our way. Bam bam bam. And on and on it goes.
And yet miraculously we are still alive and regardless of how bad we may see things or feel them there is still this sacred miraculous fact to acknowledge. Does it come from that? Our desperate clinging attachment to life, because its all we think we have or know? Maybe.
But its more than that even. We start discovering new ideas fixes work-arounds. Resolutions. There all along but hastily and forcefully plucked from the gooey muck of the innards of an oyster shell like shiny pearls. More and more and more come. Not enough time to do them because we r so busy taking note of them. Challenges still there. Yep. But so are the ideas. And it's in this that we feel the safety of our newfound confidence and cool in the face of it all.
There is more of course. There always is. Things don't always work out the wag we want them to. It's the unbearable act of being alive. Vacating in the secret world of the living. Winging it. People aren't perfect. They fuck up. We fuck up. In a constant state of flux. The ups and downs. Hold on as tightly as we can and a simple bump in the road can shake us to our core and rip our comfortable worlds apart the likes of which we can't even fathom before it happens.
But somewhere inside us IS this inner strength just waiting to be released when we most need it. There's comfort in that for us all.


- Posted by The Ambassador using BlogPress on an iPhone