Some feelings are inconvenient
A friend came to visit recently. She’s from Paris and she had never been to Marseille before. She was able to get some time off from work and decided to come to the sunny south. It was particularly sunny on her first day here, which was a stark contrast from what Paris feels like this time of the year. To soak up as much sun as we could, we decided to swim in the calanques.
After a long-ish hike we finally arrived at the beach. The sun would set in a few hours and the tides were getting high. But the saltwater was rejuvenating and the swim was great. While swimming, I hit my toe with a rock.
That sting was sharp and immediate. A small injury, a minor inconvenience. Yet, as I winced and hobbled out of the crystalline water, my mind raced, not with pain, but with irritation. Why now? I thought, a wave of frustration washing over me. I have soooo much to do. My immediate thought was that I won’t be able to go to work.
Something similar had happened to me a few months ago. I hurt my ankle while coming back from a rock-climbing session. Perks of being clumsy and taking up sports as an adult, I guess. That sting was sharper, more serious. I was almost bedridden for a few days. But my first thought was that I wouldn’t be able to go to the conference I was supposed to go to the following week. Finally I was able to limp my way to the conference, but that’s beside the point.
This was a small injury compared to the ankle sprain. My disproportionate reaction to it shed light on a few of my tendencies that I don’t like. I have a tendency to resist discomfort, to push away anything that disrupts my carefully and meticulously constructed plans. I strive for a life devoid of inconvenience. But my emotions caught me off guard.
Bizarrely, I regret not caring more about the physical pain. My reflexes were fixated on being anxious and paranoid about the future. Caring about the pain was an inconvenience. And that is what disturbs me the most about these two incidents.
I often feel things that are inconvenient. You shouldn’t be worrying about that right now, you should rather worry about this, is what my mind often tells me. I try to tell myself that these feelings won’t exist if I don’t acknowledge them. But if I don’t acknowledge them, it feels like I am being an infidel. To move on, without any acknowledgement to these feelings, is an infidelity – to others, to the past, to old notions of oneself. In doing that, I feel like I try to defer the deferral.
