The Harder Life Gets, the Softer We Need to Be

When we brace against life's bumps, we feel every stone more deeply

Every life is going to include hardship. Rejecting this reality just adds another layer of discomfort. skyNext/Shutterstock

When life gets hard and things go wrong, the most counterintuitive and seemingly impossible choice is to relax and find ease with what’s happening. After all, why would we relax when life feels out of control?

When difficulty arises, we brace against it. Our resistance is a way of saying that we’re not okay with reality and we want something different. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way, and these feelings of unease don’t help.

These days, with four broken bones in my foot, I’ve taken to tooling around New York City on a knee scooter. As you might imagine, the ride is bumpy. My scooter is no mountain bike; its wheels are small and fragile. It takes nothing more than a twig or pebble to tip it over. I’ve gone flying numerous times, landing on my broken foot in excruciating pain.

As I’ve gotten more skilled as a scooter pilot, I’ve noticed something important about what makes for a harder ride. It seems that the rougher the road, the more precarious my path, the tighter I would grip onto the handlebars. I would tense my body and brace against the jostling of my tiny vehicle. I became more rigid in body—and mind. As a result of the chronic bracing and constriction, I ended up with a spasming upper back and strained pectoral muscles, which made taking a deep breath impossible.