Life is a game of...

Let me tell you a story. This is a story about you.

You are around 11 years old. You’re sitting with the rest of your class in the gymnasium. It also doubles as the cafeteria, but the tables and benches have been carefully folded and put away and the lacquered floor swept and mopped to its highly reflective sheen. You are nervous and distracted. You are unintentionally eavesdropping on the hushed conversations going on around you, jealous of everyone else’s apparent calm. P.E. is NOT your favorite class. You hate that you are literally the fattest kid in school, let alone your class. You hate that no matter how good you do, you can’t ever keep up with the other kids; they are all faster, stronger, smarter and way more agile than you. You hate P.E. and you hate where you are. You hate the cavernous quality of the gym, where even the slightest sounds echo off the walls, floor and ceiling. You try not to even think too loud for fear that your thoughts will begin to echo around the room. And if it’s so open, why is it so hard to breathe?

You hear the door click and you whip your head around with everyone else, all conversations immediately stopping so that even the silence seems to echo around you. Your senses are sharpening and your breathing increases almost imperceptibly. You watch your 60 year old, past his prime – but probably still more athletic than you give him credit for – P.E. teacher walking in, pulling some gym equipment behind him.  As comprehension of what he’s dragging behind him hits you, you feel like a trap door underneath your stomach has suddenly been released; your heart jumps up into your throat and you are barely aware of how your muscles have tensed up as your heart rate steadily increases. You see that he’s pulling a wire cart loaded with balls - big, red, rubber balls with small hash marks stamped across the surface, increasing their grip, but making them feel rough. Tiny beads of sweat begin to form on your forehead as your thoughts are dominated by the one word that spells your imminent destruction – Dodgeball.

You look around at your class and you see the familiar range of expressions. Some kids are rolling their eyes, as if to say, “dodgeball? again? it’s so boring, don’t you have anything new for us to do?” Some kids are looking around, as if they too are uncertain what to think, apparently apprehensive. And then there’s always one or two kids that are looking around the class with hungry, greedy eyes. They’re already evaluating everyone in the class and deciding who are the easy targets - the weak links. They look at you and they smile an ominous, “grinchy” smile that can’t – and doesn’t – mean anything good. Your anxiety gives way to panic as the blood rushes out of your head into who knows where.

You already know the outcome. Everyone will be gunning for you because you are the easy mark. You stand out no matter where you stand. It doesn’t matter how you turn, there’s ample mass to target. Because you’re fatter than everyone else you’re also slower than everyone else, which means it doesn’t matter if you try to hide behind someone else, they’ll be able to move out of the way faster than you. You know you can’t back up to the wall because the opposing team can still see you and 9 times out of 10 the coach will call you out anyway. You toy with the idea of making a kamikaze play – walking right up to the line with no one else around and just stand there – exposing yourself for the easy target that you are and just wait for the sting of the rubber as multiple balls slam into you like heat seeking missiles.  But exposing yourself hurts more because you know the other kids will be aiming for your head and face, not just your massive gut. Clearly, no one seems to understand that you have feelings. Maybe they think that your extra layer of lard protects you from physical and verbal threats, but it doesn’t; if anything, the opposite is true. Not that they’d care about that anyway. It’s kill or be killed in dodgeball.

All you can do is lumber around in a panic, bracing yourself in fear for that inevitable rubber smack stinging your skin and being “out” for most of the game, i.e., the pathetic loser. Ever since your first game you’ve known that life is like a game of dodgball and you end up in life just where you end up in dodgeball…

The End

Okay, this isn’t a story about you. This is a story about me and it’s actually a true story. This really was my experience and it I share it here to illustrate one thing – fear. While the feelings I felt during dodgeball were clearly amped up, those feelings are and have been constantly with me. I feel that anxiety every day. Every morning I wake up with the panic of not knowing what’s going to “hit” me that day. Being terrified of the uncertainty of what will come, but knowing that something will indeed come – something always comes to knock me down. And while I may not know what it is that’s going to happen, I do know one thing – it’s going to hurt!

I have recently come to understand that I fear pain above all else. In my flawed thinking the presence of pain means that I’m not safe, that something is wrong and that I’m not okay. The condition of not being okay is so painful that I will do just about anything to avoid it – including (as illogical as it sounds) enduring a lesser pain to avoid the greater pain. And what’s even better is being able to “control” that lesser pain to remove uncertainty.  Therefore, I can binge on chips, cookies and other luscious carbs any time I want. It may not make me feel good in the long run (i.e., is the lesser pain), but it satisfies my emotional/physical need to be safe (i.e., avoiding a greater pain). It makes me feel like everything is right and that I’m okay – even if it is just temporary.

The problem is, of course, that this is no way to live. Living this way leads to misery, depression, weight gain and decreased health. It leads to emotional breakdowns as well. These conditions are not how God intended His children to live. It is said that fear is the antithesis of faith and I truly believe that.  My life has reflected more of fear than of faith, which only gives me one more thing to feel bad about! (It’s kind of a bad cycle.)

I’m reading a book called “Self-Compassion” by Kristin Neff, which I highly recommend. One of the points she makes is something she learned from a Buddist teacher, Shinzen Young, that “we can distinguish between the normal pain of life – difficult emotions, physical discomfort, and so on – and actual suffering, which is the mental anguish caused by fighting against the fact that life is sometimes painful.” (pp 93-94) As he taught her, “we can’t avoid pain in life… the key to happiness [is] understanding that suffering is caused by resisting pain.”

The take-away message for me is that the majority of my problems are caused by my resistance to pain and not necessarily the pain itself. I would be much happier if I allowed myself to experience pain WITHOUT interpreting that to mean that “I’m not okay.” The truth is, I can be “in pain” and still be “okay.”

This is supported in the scriptures when Lehi says, “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things.” There was no exclusionary clause to this statement. He didn’t say there must be opposition – except for righteous/obedient people, then everything is smooth sailing. He said there MUST be opposition in ALL things. (Must is actually a very strong word here - not “may” be, or “might” be, but MUST.) In other words, it is essential that opposition be present, which means – I’m going to experience pain at times and since I’m supposed to experience pain to some degree, there’s no reason to fear it or resist it (i.e., suffer).

As Jesus said in Matthew 5:45 “…for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.” In other words, no one is exempt.  Of course, a greater understanding of the Atonement leads one to acknowledge that all pains are swallowed up in Christ and, therefore, need not be feared at all.

The irony is not lost on me – how much pain I’ve caused myself by trying to avoid pain. Which is where self-compassion comes in. Offering myself forgiveness and understanding can overcome the guilt I feel for how poorly I treated myself over the years, all as a result of trying to avoid pain. Then acknowledging that pain is inevitable and that’s okay!! The hardest thing for me to do is to “sit” with bad emotions and tell myself that I’m okay. I feel the autonomic response of fight-or-flight kick in and I panic. Since I have nothing to fight, I choose “flight” or avoidance, e.g. drowning my sorrows in a bag of oreos, and the cycle continues.

This process of sitting with bad emotions and still being okay is going to be tough to learn, but I also have hope that it will help me end the cycle of pain I cause myself, that I can be free from fear and that ultimately, I can stop believing that life is a game of dodgeball.