The Fires of Life

I am about three months into this year of travel I gifted myself. One quarter of the way through. It has gone incredibly fast and has also been a lifetime long. Again, my mind spins back to how warped time can become. But something happened last week for the first time since I left Colorado…I missed a flight.

It is not the first flight I have had to change and wiggle around since starting this journey. My very first flight to India had to be completely rebooked because of a flight change that gave me too short of a layover. But this is the first flight mishap that occurred at the airport. But really, that was a blip on my radar and not exactly what this post is about.

It started with a quick weekend trip to California to celebrate two friends birthdays. It was a bit different than expected because of a storm that blew in right after we did. The forecast was grim and there were even evacuation orders quite close to where we were staying. But we ran with it and had two beautiful days before the storm arrived. Thankfully, we ended up being on the edge of the storm and felt the impacts minimally. We only got one windy and rainy day, nothing to write home about.

After living in the mountains of Colorado for years, we all realized our tolerance to risky weather is significantly higher than Californians. Everyone around us was anxious and stressing, almost all the shops and restaurants closed down and even schools closed well in advance of Monday! We had all endured many winter storms in Colorado and knew that it was out of our control. All we could do was take advantage of the bad weather as a great excuse to hunker down and rest and relax for the entire day.

We ended up having many conversations about how the world’s tolerance is to discomfort is lowering. This is a topic that is almost constantly present in my mind. Working for years to understand pain and suffering has shifted my perspective in so many ways. One of the biggest lessons I am constantly learning is that discomfort, pain and suffering are an essential part of life. By essential, I mean impossible to avoid and necessary to evolve. Dare I say, pain is one of the greatest gifts of life. Without it, life may become stagnant.

We live in a world that tries to sell us on the idea that if we do everything right, we should be able to live a comfortable life without pain, discomfort or suffering. This is one of the biggest lies we are ever taught. It is also one of the most damaging lies we carry with us. When we believe there is a way around suffering if we live “right”, then subconsciously we believe experiencing pain and suffering means we are living the “wrong” way. This is an incredibly harmful perspective to hold and can create and endless loop of suffering. It also creates quite the profitable market when we all start seeking comfort externally but I will save that topic for another day.

This subconscious belief impacts so much in our lives that we cannot even understand. But this is just scratching the surface of quiet beliefs we hold that impact our relationship with pain and discomfort. My mission in life is to rewrite the common narrative of pain. I am not the first to have this desire. Almost all religions and spiritual paths begin with a search to understand and reduce suffering and pain. I’ve said this before but my study of pain began as a scientific quest and has evolved into a spiritual journey.

There is not a lot I know to be solid truth in this life but I do know that pain and discomfort is absolutely inevitable. The noble truths of Buddhism speak of suffering being an unavoidable part of life. They also speak of the fact that suffering ends. This is an important point to remember. Because what I have seen, more than ever recently, is that we live in a world that is teaching us to fear pain and discomfort. When we fear something, we refuse to learn about it. If we do not explore pain and discomfort, then when we are met with it, the fear intensifies. This is a dangerous place to live.

When we think we can curate a comfortable and pain free life by doing all the right things, we inevitably lower our tolerance to discomfort when it does find us. And again, it will find us. Especially now, as our world is constantly on fire for one reason or another.

These figurative and sometimes literal fires, whether adverse weather, trauma, or physical pain and suffering, all hold a purpose. I always come back to nature as a wise teacher when I struggle to clarify a topic. Nature has many beautiful examples of how necessary the discomforts or fires of life can be.

A plant that has adapted to tolerate fire is called a pyrophyte. There are several kinds of these but pyrophiles are my favorite. They are plants that require fire to complete their cycle of reproduction. These plants require fire for a new seed to be released and begin to germinate.

These plants and trees produce seeds deep within cones that are covered in resin. This resin protects the seeds from predators and the environment. Only when the resin melts due to heat from a fire, can the seeds be released into the world and begin to grow.

I believe that we as humans are pyrophiles. We all contain seeds within that need the fires of life to unlock them and allow them to sprout. Perhaps like the giant sequoia, lodgepole pine and eucalyptus, we require fire to grow and evolve. If we resist and hide from the pain and discomfort that come with fires, we also resist and hide from the potential growth that fire creates.

Again, these fires in life do have a purpose. By avoiding or denying their existence, opportunities may be lost. Pain and discomfort are the fires of life that sparks change. They push us out of our comfort zones and the boxes we have put ourselves in. They allow for growth in ways we may have never imagined.

They say it is human nature to avoid pain and seek pleasure. Yes, this may be what we are taught. But what happens when we honor pain and pleasure both as wise teachers. To allow both to support our evolution and growth as we strive to be the best humans possible.

What sort of revolution would this create? Pain as a teacher, equanimity towards pain and pleasure, allowing fire to burn the boxes we’ve outgrown, to let heat create little seedlings of ideas within. All of these concepts are foundational in the teachings of many spiritual and religious practices, a world I am just beginning to dive into. What I do know is that getting curious about discomfort and pain has taught me more about myself than I ever imagined. That the fires of life are always where the sweetest lessons of life bloom from.

So I will continue to sit with suffering. Knowing fully that suffering exists but it always has an end. I could go on and on about all the connections and stories and beautiful ways I have learned this in my life. But for now, I will leave you with this.

Sometimes we have to let the wildfires of life burn us to the ground to crack us open and allow the beautiful seedlings within to find the light and begin to bloom.