This feeling can be colored by fear, dread, can feel like anxiety, but at the root of most fear is a sense that you are insufficient for the task that is in front of you.
Not big enough, not smart enough, not fast enough… Not enough = insufficient.
Now, for most people, feeling this is all they need to run for the hills.
For some people, they can hang in there, waiting for the feeling to subside.
For some people, unless they feel up to the task, they won’t even start.
For me: I know that unless I feel that and go beyond it, doing what I don’t feel I can, several times a day, I am not growing.
Said in another way: growing means you go where you are not sufficient, and do what you feel you cannot do.
Your ability to feel discomfort, to feel insufficiency, fear, dread, etc. and still act, equals your ability to grow.
Epicurean is an approach to life that tells you to avoid discomfort and seek pleasure.
We all have some of it. Some of us have more than others.
Tho more Epicurean you live, the less you accomplish in life, and the less capacity you have to grow.
All accomplishment comes with fear, insufficiency, and pain.
The more you are able and willing to go beyond the pain, the more pain you can bear.
It’s temporary.
If there were any design to the Universe, or to Life, this would be an important part of that design: only those that can bear pain deserve to go to the next level…
This is the “earned deserving”, not the deserving that is your birth right. You have a birth right to go for it. You don’t have a birth right to attain it.
The American constitution declares every man’s right to the pursuit of happiness, not the right to attain it.
This is the nature of reality. Pursuit is to prepare the soil, saw the seeds, water it, protect it from wind and erosion, and animals, and too much sun… all for the chance to reap.
The result is not promised. Everything that you have, is the result of what you have done… and if you don’t like your results, you may have to re-examine your approach, your attitude, your mindset, your actions.
Where did you fall short? Where did you skimp? Where did you spare yourself from pain?
Where were you unwilling or unable to adjust? Where were you unaware… asleep on the job? Where were you in entitled mode? Where were you in hope?
Life is fragile, and nothing is promised… except the right to pursue.
Life is not a vending machine… it’s more like the stock market…
You can get good at it, or not.
You ARE insufficient for most of life… and you get more insufficient by the day.
But it doesn’t have to stop you. I am watching, as I am writing this article, a pigeon that only has one leg. Even standing is a balancing job for it… no rest for the one-legged bird. But it can live, it can do most everything else another pigeon can do.
You have all your limbs?
Every consecutive generation of humans will be born with more and more birth defects. Unless we recognize that we need nutrients that aren’t in our food, even if we “eat well”.
We are fat, weak, cowardly, and ready to give up at the drop of a hat.
Your behavior, approach, toughness, ability to bear pain or go beyond depend, a lot, on whether you have all the nutrients your body needs, or not.
I didn’t mean to come this way, but hey, I follow where consciousness leads me.
I have recently had a breakthrough in providing myself with the necessary nutrients, or at least most of them. And it enabled me to do a number of things that previously I felt totally unprepared to do… as if I had gotten smarter… lol.
This is a whole other topic: your nutritional state and your behavior, mindset, personality, and intelligence… That will be dealt with in another article.
