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When it comes to most aspects of living, I'm the type of person who prefers structure and timelines. I'm a big fan of deadlines, lists and setting intentions. Whether by nature or nurture, this is the most comfortable way I've accomplished many short and longterm goals. For me, a deadline provides a definitive end, as well as a source of pressure that my schedule needs to jump start my self-motivation. Similarly, a list of what I want or need to do allows me the satisfaction of crossing things off of it. The verbalizing to someone or writing down of my intentions (which I define as less concrete desires or practices I want to incorporate into my life, such as increase my level of focus or spend more time outdoors) makes the statement more real for me, as if I can't take it back once I've expressed those thoughts somewhere outside of myself.
A place where I do this monthly is a dinner group one of my dear friends started a few years ago. Every time the group meets, we spend some portion of the evening discussing our goals and intentions, checking on everyone's progress and seeing what has changed, progressed, stalled out and, more often than not, been successfully accomplished. Naturally, this additional way to be accountable, a group of interesting, inspiring women working on their own different projects, has been a wonderful addition to my life, and our conversations together bring up very useful questions about how different people approach their lives.
At our last dinner, one such question came up: How do people get over their issues? This, the mother of all emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually vexing questions, led our discussion into many adjacent inquiries, such as: Must one get to the root of a personal issue to get rid of it? Does a personal issue ever go away? Does the mind have to be free of the issue before the body can be free of the associated behavior or vice versa?
We shared our differing opinions on this topic and talked about our varied points of view; no agreement or conclusion was reached, as it tends to go with broad, fascinating questions that are pondered amongst friends with a glass or two of wine. After all, different personalities respond to personal struggle in vastly different ways. And I was reminded that what I feel is a good strategy may not work for someone else.
When I left the dinner, all these questions swirling in my head, I was suddenly transported back to my younger self and an intention I wrote down on the eve of my 25th birthday. In my diary I wrote, "By the time I turn 30, I want to get over all my issues." Everyone reading this, feel free to pause to collect yourself from all the hearty laughter you've just experienced at my expense. I certainly laughed remembering it!
When I was 25, I recall thinking that being a grownup (which I certainly didn't consider myself to be, even though I was) would equate with an overall calmness, a complete understanding of my inner-workings, a control over all aspects of my identity. In other words, issues were something people left behind in one's youth. Suffice to say, my 30th year did not coincide with the complete disappearance of personal struggle and internal turmoil, quite the contrary. By the time 30 came and went, I was in a state of complete emotional disarray, not knowing how I wanted my life to unfold. I'd spent the past five years thinking that the less I thought about my personal issues, the smaller they'd become — as if I could mentally suffocate them by not thinking about them. In not thinking about them, they snuck up when I wasn't paying attention.
Getting over my issues did not mean striding over them like a hurdler in a race. Getting over them wasn't the right phrase. Instead, I had to use the next five years (and I will probably spend the next thirty, and then some) enacting a different strategy. The one that works for me: Working with my issues, instead of getting over them, and getting through my problems instead of becoming them.
So what do I mean by all this? Why are these words so important to me and my behavior?
The way I think about it, if my issues are with me, they are a part of who I am. Accepting that means I don't need fixing; it means I need to adapt and create healthy ways of going about being me, despite less than ideal circumstances sometimes. Issues I don't have to remove, that are simply part of me, also recognizes the possibility that understanding them could provide value and even strength. As such, the older I get, the more my issues and personal struggles have resulted in better coping skills.
Along those same lines, getting through my problems means that I have agency and a path to take, even if it's painful. Just because I'm facing a particular challenge, doesn't mean it defines my life in the present moment or for all time. Sometimes problems I've faced have felt bigger than me, but knowing and visualizing them as temporary, gives them less power of me. For me, there's value in the permanence of issues and the impermanence of the problems that arise because of them.
Now that I'm in the latter half of my 30s, I tend to see my issues as the part of me that I have harnessed, like a tool or power source from which I can draw incredible insights about myself and the world. I can laugh easily about how hard certain struggles were at an earlier time. What appeared insurmountable then, seem less scary and even manageable now. Perhaps my issues were and are a necessary part of gaining wisdom. They certainly seem that way.
When I project into the future, there's going to come a time when I'll have to face something that could very well be an insurmountable problem, a disease, a challenge I've never had to face. Then, even more than now, I will have to rely on what I've learned from what I've already faced. I have a feeling I'll be grateful for what my issues and problems have taught me. In the end, they might be my greatest strength.
An old saying sums up the reason I don't say I need to get over my issues: "Smooth seas do not make skilled sailors."
