“Why did
you threaten my servant?” he asked.
Death
responded, “I did not threaten him. I was just surprised find him here since I
have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”
The
servant, in trying to flee from death, met his demise even faster.
I first
heard this story in the context of surviving a concentration camp. Victor
Frankl asserted in A Man’s Search for
Meaning, that many times being still and allowing fate to take its course
had meant survival for him, while struggling against death had precipitated
dying for many of his fellow prisoners.
I assert
that we all do the same in innumerable ways, even if our flight is not always
fatal. We try to outrun discomfort and
unhappiness and end up confronting exactly what we were trying to avoid. We want to feel whole so we seek out a person
who gives us immediate validation, but long term pain. We seek relief from stress and worry in a
bottle and end up with a permanent problem.
We have troubled relationships so we lose ourselves in our electronic
devices, missing out on real relationships altogether.
I spent a
lot of time putting my own problems aside in order to help other people with
theirs. It wasn’t exactly altruistic
because I was doing it to avoid dealing with my own life. I ended up feeling resentful. I ended up with a tangled, painful mess.
What if I
had confronted my own problems in the first place? When I finally faced my obstacles head on,
they evaporated. Ok, maybe there was
some discomfort involved in the beginning, but then I was free. I was able to move on, let go of resentment,
and feel grateful for the lesson.
Why wait?
I have previously established that I tend to be idealistic, but I don’t
think it is quixotic to say that sometimes being still and experiencing pain is
the first step toward surviving it.
