It Takes Rising and Falling to Live

Humans are creatures of habit.

In general, once we establish a pattern, we get really uncomfortable when that pattern gets disrupted.

Whether it’s stopping off at the coffee shop every morning or sitting down on the couch to enjoy a favorite show every week, those bits of regularity provide structure for our lives. And that structure insulates us from the rest of the things in our lives that we don’t have control over.

But sometimes, those patterns wear thin. Maybe they’re detrimental to our well-being (kicking back with a few drinks every night may be a bad thing) or maybe you’ve changed enough as a person that those old bits of comfort stop feeling comfortable (that old 80s comedy you love doesn’t quite feel the same now that you know just how offensive some of the humor is to people you care about). Regardless of the reason, the comfort of the pattern turns to tedium or outright discomfort.

Stuck in a Rut

Repeating the same patter for too long can dig us deep into that pattern. So deep that we can lose sight of any other way of being. When we forget that there are other ways to be, we begin to lose our ability to deal well with those other ways.

If you’ve spent years in a high-stress environment (work, relationship, war zone, whatever), you may get very anxious when that stress lessens even slightly.

If you’ve spent years insulated from the hardships of the world due to financial stability and a solid social network, losing your job or the death of a key friend could throw all sorts of things into disarray.

When you’re stuck in a rut, whether it seems good or bad while you’re there, any deviation from the groove you’re in literally runs you into a wall. If it hits hard enough, it drives you up the wall, to the point where you can once again see the world outside of the trench you’ve been in (or, if you prefer, below the cloud line of the mountain you’ve been living on).

You become aware once more of the possibilities that are out there. For better or worse, you get thrust back into a reality that you don’t have full control over.

That can be terrifying.

Or it can be freeing.

The Choice is Yours

Your patterns are always going to be disrupted at some point. That’s just a basic truth of life. Life is Chaos. There is balance, but it is a dynamic equilibrium, always in motion.

Extremes may not last, but the low point of the swing–where everything feels most familiar, that rut you’re in–is just as transient, if not more so. It may be comfortable there, but you’re always going to be pushed up or down one side or the other by forces outside of your control.

The only thing you can control is how you deal with those changes.

That does not mean you can outright control how you feel about those changes. Feelings are going to happen whether you want them to or not, but you can can control how you deal with those feelings.

You can choose to see failure, or to see opportunity to change direction.

You can choose to see destruction, or to see cleared space where something new can be built.

You can choose to fight to stay in your rut, or you can make use of the momentum behind you and fling yourself out of it into the wider world.

None of This is Easy

Few things that are easy are worth the effort.

When you feel like you’re stuck in a rut, it takes effort to break out of it. You have to find the rhythm of the forces around you and tap into it to help you along. If you don’t, you’re going to be at the mercy of the world around, trapped in a constant state of reaction and likely feeling powerless.

It’s scary to acknowledge the power you have to change things. Even scarier–and often genuinely risky–to assert that power once you discover it. But it can be done. People do it all the time. (Some of them are those external forces pushing or pulling you one way or the other.)

You may feel doomed to always be on the bottom, being tread upon and used. You may seek to always be on top, king or queen of the world, carefree and happy. Neither of those is going to be the way things always are.

Life is what happens between the highs and the lows. It is motion and change and, in general, a kind of beautiful chaos.

You can either be buffeted by those chaotic forces, or you can recognize the reality of it and choose which currents you’re going to fight, and which you’re going to use to help you fight–or push through–the “bad” ones.

Doing this will teach you a lot about yourself. Not all of it will be pleasant, but, if you let it, it will all be for the best.

Things always change. The high points and the low points are transitory, it is the movement–rising and falling–is where most of your life, and your power, exists.

You should take what control you can of the experience. It’s a much better use of energy than trying to accomplish the impossible task of always keeping them the same.