ACCEPTANCE OVER AVOIDANCE.

"Whether you suffer from anxiety, loneliness, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or a dickhead boss who ruins half of your waking hours every day, the solution lies in the acceptance and active engagement of that negative experience, not the avoidance of it, not the salvation from it."

~ Mark Manson

Who else can relate to dealing with an issue that keeps reoccurring or even returns in a worse situation? Like the very thing you’ve tried so hard to forget suddenly finds you in the middle of a lonely path on a desert street one hot afternoon.

It’s probably because you’ve avoided it for the longest time.

Lately, I’ve been reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F^ck by Mark Manson, and I’ll tell you this for free: every chapter feels like a direct attack launched at me.

There’s a chapter dedicated to the inevitability of pain. According to Manson, we often handle pain in two negative ways:

1. Pretend it doesn’t exist

2. Blame it on others

Here’s the twist. When we do either of these, we end up running in circles only to find ourselves back at the same pain. Because running away or avoiding it doesn’t make it disappear.

This reminds me of Hazel Grace from The Fault in Our Stars: “Pain demands to be felt.” If it doesn’t hurt, then it’s not pain.

Just like Alan Watts' backward law suggests, the harder you try to escape pain, the more fiercely you feel its impact. But when you take it all in, accept the pain, embrace the chaos, only then can you not just overcome it but also thrive through it.

Dearest reader, are you going through something? Are you having a hard time? Like the above axiom states, the solution lies in acceptance and active participation. Avoidance will only bring it back in the long run.

@favvy_Okwans🖤.