At peace.
The Buddha said that suffering is like being shot by two arrows. The first
arrow is the physical pain—it’s the metal piercing the skin, the force colliding
into the body. The second arrow is the mental pain, the meaning and emotion
we attach to the being struck, the narratives that we spin in our minds about
whether we deserved or didn’t deserve what happened. In many cases, our
mental pain is far worse than any physical pain. In most cases, it lasts far
longer.
Through the practice of meditation, the Buddha said that if we could train
ourselves to be struck only by the first arrow, we could essentially render
ourselves invincible to any mental or emotional pain.
That, with enough practiced focus, with enough antifragility, the passing
sensation of an insult or an object piercing our skin, or gallons of gasoline
aflame over our body, would possess the same fleeting feeling as a fly
buzzing across our face.
That while pain is inevitable, suffering is always a choice.
That there is always a separation between what we experience and how
we interpret that experience.
That there’s always a gap between what our Feeling Brain feels and what
our Thinking Brain thinks. And in that gap, you can find the power to bear
anything.
Children have a low tolerance for pain because the child’s entire ethos
revolves around the avoidance of pain. For the child, a failure to avoid pain is
a failure to find meaning or purpose. Therefore, even modest amounts of pain
will cause the child to fall into fits of nihilism.
The adolescent has a higher pain threshold because the adolescent
understands that pain is often a necessary trade-off to achieve his goals. The
notion of enduring pain for some sort of future benefit thus allows the
adolescent to incorporate some hardships and setbacks into his vision of hope:
I will suffer through school so I can have a good career; I will deal with my
obnoxious aunt so I can enjoy my holiday with the family; I will wake up at
the ass-crack of dawn to work out because it will make me look sexy.
The problem arises when the adolescent feels that he got a bad bargain,
when the pain exceeds his expectations and the rewards don’t live up to the
hype. This will cause the adolescent, like the child, to fall into a crisis of
hope: I sacrificed so much and got so little back! What was the point? It will
thrust the adolescent into the depths of nihilism and an unkindly visit with the
Uncomfortable Truth.