How To Deal With Profound Pain
It Is Inevitable
Welcome to the paid edition of YouTopian Journey, a Substack featured publication. Each week I will be sharing unique wisdom that can help you in the daily battles that we must all fight in the game of life. This week we discuss how to deal with profound pain.
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BEFORE WE BEGIN
This is issue #2 in our first multi-issue special for YouTopian Journey.
The battle is on.
Continuing for the next month, we will discuss how to use pain, how to live with a sense of urgency, how to battle distraction, and ultimately how to use your time to live a more fulfilling life.
If you aren’t a paid subscriber, there is no better time than now to upgrade. You won’t want to miss this. The knowledge will be invaluable to you on your journey (and the art will be pretty epic as well).
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Now onto the good stuff.
PAIN CAN’T BE AVOIDED
“There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.”-Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
As a people, we want to avoid many things. Discomfort, boredom, certain people, bad weather, school, and more. Yet the one thing that we universally want to avoid at all costs is pain. Pain is something that, no matter the circumstances, we just refuse to stomach.
And with good reason.
It hurts. It is uncomfortable. It offers nothing useful to use in the short term. We would rather be doing anything else so we often pursue anything and everything to avoid pain.
Paradoxically, the avoidance of pain is often what brings it about and in greater lengths and intensity in the future. This is especially the case for those who wish to pursue their dreams and make them a reality.
Why?
Because pain is inevitable. It is a constant companion. The pain we face will come from from every angle. If we take action, we face the possibility of the unknown. If we fail to take action, we face the possibility of regret.
We face the possibility of pain from both defeat and success.
Success? Really?
How can that be possible?
We know that defeat is painful. Countless hours of hard work washed away in an instant. Resources spent that can never be recovered. Horrible feelings of doubt and a loss of confidence.
But success?
Success is the epitome of everything you desire. It is the result of everything you have struggled for. It can’t be painful because you have overcome the pain to achieve success and arrive at your destination.
Surely this must be a typo or an error.
Right?