Elevate

This week I heard something I loved in this podcast (about 32 minutes in) with Fr. Seán ÓLoaire. He shares an interaction he had while working in Kenya, sitting with a group of village elders trying to help them solve some problems he observed. He said one of the elders spoke up and asked him, "Can you tell me why is it for you Europeans that your only response to a problem is to want to solve it?"

ÓLoaire said, "What do you do with a problem?"

And the elder said, "a problem is an invitation to self-transcendence. And if all you do is solve it, life will just give you another problem. And if your only response to that problem is to solve it, you'll get a third problem. And you'll keep getting problems until you learn to realize that you need to elevate. And when you elevate sufficiently, you'll see much more interesting connections between the resources and the problems."

I love that.

It's human nature to scan the environment for threats and then avoid or remove them. We're hardwired for survival, after all. But are we so adept at fixing things that we're missing the opportunity to experience the pain the problem causes and the lessons we can learn from it? Are we realizing that we need to elevate in the face of a problem? And what does that even mean?

Being present with discomfort can offer insight not just into the situation, but into ourselves. And when we understand ourselves, all kinds of new ideas and resources become available to us.

So how does one sit with discomfort? Start by noticing it and all the related feelings it brings. Then realize that all these feelings are acute and transient experiences - not identities we inhabit.   They come and share their lessons and then they go. Don't worry - they'll come back when they are needed. When the feeling is gone or transformed into something else, we have to reflect and allow the experience to change us in some way.

This is the practice of resilience.