Stop Running
Seneca on one's need to embrace thyself
Hi all and welcome to another week of Monday Meditations.
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A big part of life is avoidance. We shy away from pain because it hurts. We prefer comfort over discomfort. We will, in most cases, do what we have to in order to avoid situations we do not want to be in.
There are people who are constantly running from their problems. Some literally get up and try to leave their problems by going on vacation while others jump from partner to partner, attempting to avoid the one thing that cannot be run from, the one thing that if provided proper attention, could save lots of time, energy, and heartache: oneself.
“You must change the mind, not the venue,” Seneca recommends to his friend Lucilius.
Running is easy. It provides us temporary relief from pain and discomfort and allows us the ability to think we can and have escaped it. But the fact is, the things we run from end up being there, being dragged around with us like a ball and chain. Sure, sometimes we do succeed and get that temporary relief we desired, but eventually the original pain or discomfort returns, and that is because we have not dealt with the source of it.
“Why do we deceive ourselves?” Seneca asks. “Our trouble is not external to us: it is within, right down in the vital organs.”
Change does not come overnight, and it is not always easy.
But it is rewarding.
By embracing our discomforts we are taking the first steps to better understand ourselves. Anyone who has conquered their fear and desire to run away has had to do this. They have had to stare in the mirror and take that first step toward changing what they’ve been running from. It is not only the first step, it is the most critical--it is a commitment to oneself.
“He who comes to the mirror to change himself has already changed...” Seneca once wrote to his brother.
“No one acquires an excellent mind without first having a bad one. All of us have been taken over already, and to learn virtue is to unlearn one’s faults.”
We only have one person we can truly know inside and out and that is ourselves. Given that relationship will last quite a long time, we should take the time to better understand ourselves and try to live as good a life as we can.
Seneca, summarizing the sentiment in another letter to Lucilius, wrote:
“It is unbelievable how much I endured just because I could not endure myself.”
Take the time to stop running from the mirror and instead stop and look into it. You may not always like what you see at that time, but it doesn’t mean one day you won’t. It all starts with taking the step toward the reflection.