389. Finding Reassurance

When I’m facing a particularly bad situation, I immediately start looking for signs of reassurance. I want to know that things are not as bad as they seem. I want to be able to see a way out of the difficulty. I want to know that there is a route back to the relatively comfortable existence I’m used to living.

But sometimes nothing like this is available. Even as I try to find something that might at least temporarily satisfy these wants, nothing provides me with any solid reassurance. What I instead discover is that the situation truly is bad and it’s likely to get worse. The realization that the comfort and certainty I desperately want are not only distant but receding almost always brings on the suffering of despair. I feel miserable because I’m trapped where I am.

Sometimes it’s not only my desire for reassurance that is frustrated but also my ability to meet my own needs. This can cause my despair to expand, but it also provides me with an important signal. If my basic needs are at risk of going unmet, I must allow my attention the freedom to attend to them. I have to release it from searching for reassurance and allow it to see what I must do to meet my needs.

Only when I’m free from my attachment to stability and comfort is there a real possibility for my suffering to be transformed. For then my actions become responses to the needs I see in myself and in others, and everything I do gains a new purpose. Instead of descending into a deepening despair that threatens to swallow me whole, I’m lifted up by an almost impossible joy as I begin to take action. It is this sense of purpose and joy that provides both the energy I need to press forward and the hope to reassure me, despite the daunting future I face.