About forty five years ago I was at my parents house playing basketball with friends. I came in limping. My dad saw me and said, “You know until you get to be about thirty you keep doing those things you did as a kid and you hurt yourself. After fifty things start hurting on their own, but between thirty and fifty you have twenty years of hardly hurting at all. That wasn’t true for me due to my active lifestyle. I’ve seen various doctors and physical therapists for my injuries. They all said one thing in common. Ice is your friend. It helps relieve pain. It can be therapeutic and it will never make things worse.
Over many years I’ve found the same to be true regarding psychological stress and being present. It helps reduce or eliminate discomfort. It often fixes the problem and it’s never harmed me yet.
Just like physical injury, emotional discomfort is often self-inflicted. I tie myself in knots by projecting problems that don’t yet exist. There’s a common name for this malady. It’s called worry. Mark Twain said, “I’ve suffered a great many catastrophes in my life. Most of them never happened.” My mom had a magnet on her refrigerator that said, “Worry is the misuse of my imagination”. Being present fixes that problem, because I am dealing with things as they are, right now.
Now and then my problems exist in real time. Life just hurts on its own. Being present brings all my mental and emotional resources to bear at this single point in time. I take the first step. After that I take another step. Life always comes one moment at a time, if I am present. I discussed this in my post Inch by Inch. Amazing things have been done one step at a time.
It’s been said that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. I’ll continue to rely on being present as my ice for the soul. Nothing more complicated than perception.
May you have enough today, one moment at a time.
THIS HELPED ME 