Your Intolerables Choose For You
In this article, is a short piece about the paradox of hard, fixed stances in one’s life, and the way that we think they give us more control, when actually they are the ones limiting our choices. As usual, much of healing and growth, particularly in relation to depression, is about acceptance.
We can tend to think that having unwavering opinions or stances makes us indomitable, keeping us in charge of our lives. Yet, when you look at what actually goes on around the things in our lives that we declare to be intolerable, what we find is that it is those intolerables that are making the choices, not us. Or stated another way, what we do not accept, controls us.
For instance, if I am one who finds driving in traffic intolerable, I may understand that as, “Well, that’s just who I am,” or, “I shouldn’t have to subject myself to that (the city should design its streets better, etc.).” Someone comes along and suggests maybe there are some techniques that might make the commute less onerous, or that maybe it’s a good grinding stone against which to soften, you know, Marty, maybe some of your more rigid parts? (To which Marty might well, and predictably, say, “Wha?!? Ridgid?!? Me?”)
Although I think that my stance on traffic (“categorically bad and awful”) seems principled and righteous, my intolerable makes all sorts of choices about my experience, implicitly.
The Universe asks the question of me, as I’m heading for my car to commute home, how I might like to feel about the ride home. “It’s up to you; I’m on board for however you want to handle it,” says the Universe. And I, in my implicit actions and feelings, wipe away the question and assume there’s only one way to feel about the traffic: bad. But, also implicitly, I believe that has nothing to do with me; it’s the only realistic attitude towards something that is, concretely, so intolerable. To which the Universe says, “Ok, sure, I’m ok with that.”
In other words, the intolerables of our lives define how we feel and act, supposedly without our input. But, of course, if that were true, that intolerables are simply a response to an impossible world, then everyone should be feeling the same reactions to the same situation. Which, of course, is not true.
Ironically, then, what we resist controls us.
The solution, then, assuming in my case that I can’t make the traffic go away or not drive, is to turn towards the experience and stop resisting it. That is, to adapt to the reality that I can’t defeat, and experience not a greater control over it, but a greater influence over our own experience, which is what we’re wanting in the first place by trying to reject the intolerable.
To test this, find in your own life something that has this stamp of an “intolerable.” Maybe traffic, maybe mowing the lawn, maybe facing your partner’s anger, maybe setting a boundary with the boss–but once identified, see how you can turn towards it, and challenge the concrete, rigid quality of that intolerable by approaching it differently. Mow the lawn while listening to your Portuguese language app. Maybe bring the boss a book on nonviolent communication. Maybe do a survey of mid-60’s Polka revival music on your drive home. Or tell your partner you love them when they are in their anger.
But regardless, the challenge there is to start by questioning the supposedly fixed, monolithic quality of the intolerable, experiment with acting “out of the box,” and see if that doesn’t help you feel less pained, and especially, less controlled.
