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October: Embrace Discomfort



Image: a rather endless field of goldenrod


I recently had an experience of prolonged discomfort. Pretty much the whole time I was enduring this discomfort, I was thinking about what I would do when I could get comfortable. I wanted three pillows, all the kinds of food I like to eat most, all the drugs I regularly take–the perfect espresso and the perfectly mixed cocktail. I wanted soft, indirect lighting. I wanted to sleep in real darkness, and I wanted the mattress to be not too fluffy and not too hard. I wanted total control over my time and what I was doing. I even wanted the right kind of silence–moving to a smaller town has made me such a connoisseur of silences. I distinctly remember wanting tree rustling silence with the faint murmur of water moving in the background instead of the annoying 60 Hz buzz of city silence. 


What has been interesting ever since that experience is the way I reach out for all these things I wanted so much, and instead of just consuming them, I keep looking at each comfort item like I am cleaning out a closet and asking, “Really? Do you really want and need this?”  It feels endless. “Do you really need coffee to write and think, or does it mostly make you feel dry and shriveled and angry? Is a cocktail actually fun, or does it feel fun for twenty minutes and then ruin your sleep all night long? Do you want total control over your time or do you want your precious time to be constantly interrupted by the people you love, and who love you? Do you need all those pillows?” In this last case, the answer is yes, but you see the big idea here. I am not the only person who moves through the world from “need” to “need,” telling myself all these stories about who I am, what I am capable of, what’s good for me, what will make me feel comfortable and safe. This is such a predicable human trait that a natal chart can tell you pretty much exactly what kinds of stories you’re gonna tell! All these stories and preferences are your paths to participation in this mysterious world, and are in that way deep and somewhat real-ish, in their own way.  


But very few of them are actually true. And there’s a whole world beyond them that is also yours to experience. 


I’m telling you this because October begins with an eclipse that is asking us all to put a story, belief, habit, or grudge that we think defines us or that we need right down the drain. Maybe you’re called to do this because it’s time to face that difficult task that lies outside your comfort zone. Maybe like me, you’re just finding that this habit or story or whatever you’re indulging does not bring the comfort or goodness or justice that you think it does. Either way, as we move past eclipse season and into the rest of the month, there are… well, it’s like the whole month is a walk through a meadow of relatively unimpressive wildflowers–like a field of goldenrod. Some of us will want and enjoy this walk. A small number of us will need to traverse the meadow to get to a very big conflict on the other side that feels way worse than the meadow. Far more of us will be doing this walk as a work project that was supposed to be simple and indoors, and be pretty put out by it. Some of us will be dropping our kids off at school and it will feel more difficult than usual because usually we just hop in the car. No matter how you wind up in this metaphorical meadow, it will be very easy to focus on how you don’t want to be in a meadow, and how this walk is getting way too long, and how the sun is too hot, and this meadow seems rather endless and flat and boring, and there’s no coffee, and the goldenrod maybe is igniting your allergies, and you might even ask yourself why you’re in a meadow when you should be somewhere else. But on the other hand, it will be a meadow, and meadows are nice, and maybe the goldenrod will be waving in the breeze and you might feel that wind on your face and notice that you are getting somewhere, that the meadow does have a path, and while you can’t see the end, you are okay. You might even decide that this detour is great, even though it’s uncomfortable. 


Another way to say this is that there is a lot of good in October if you know where to find it. But finding it will be a function of continually challenging your need for everything to go your way, and be beautiful, and fantastic, and life changing, and super meaningful, and easy. The good in October is moment after moment of “Well, that could have been much worse!” Or “I did a challenging thing and I feel good about the incremental progress I made!” Or “I feel good because I stopped doing something that made me feel bad.” It is a fantastic month to sit with difficult feelings so you can actually heal; finally put your phone in another room at night instead of scrolling yourself to sleep; start exercising; or otherwise address the bad feelings and states that come from having too much of a good thing. 


A third way to say this is that October has some profoundly rough edges that are mercifully held in check at almost every turn. And one good way to handle difficulty is to go ahead and handle it! This is a good month to do so, in part because the difficulty will be consistently mitigated. Just keep in mind that we do not live in a culture that values or provides good handholds for really addressing difficulty. In fact, the first step to handling the difficulty of this month may be to step off the hedonic treadmill of modern life so that you can actually be with whatever is demanding your participation. Get a little outside your own need for comfort, and be in this unexpected discomfort enough to feel the breeze on your face this month. Don’t slog through it while staring at your phone, complaining the whole time that life is terrible when you’re really doing something as manageable and potentially uplifting as unexpectedly taking a long sweaty walk through a meadow.

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