There Are Many Answers
In recent years, I have met many people searching for answers. They are looking for a fulfilling path through life. They are looking for a way that serves them and makes their life meaningful. Some are seeking relief from physical or psychological trauma. Some are seeking simplicity, believing that removing complicating issues - one by one - will purify their mind and make them more accepting.
My personal path has revealed to me how many people in this world are suffering in some way at all times. Suffering is evident to us all when it shows itself in the form of poverty, hunger, homelessness, or addiction. What I have become more aware of is a level of constant suffering many people endure quietly. For reasons of shame, courtesy toward others, or general privacy - they show one face to the world and in private they endure.
About seven years ago, following a divorce, I found myself being pulled into the yoga community. I had taken yoga classes before on a sporadic basis and turned to yoga more fully not in a search for answers, but simply as a form of exercise that would occupy my time and get me out of the house. I needed to break the solitude. Yoga classes would force me to be among other people even if I didn’t talk with any of them or attempt to build a personal relationship with anyone I met.
Quite accidentally, I was introduced to a vigorous form of yoga that I found physically challenging and rewarding. I have always been active, but I would never consider myself an athlete. I can participate, but have never excelled in any sport. As my yoga practice developed, I was surprised at my progress. Yoga was an activity that offered a physical challenge I could meet on my terms. I kept going. I took more classes. I went from practicing once a week to five times a week. For at least the first year, it was solely a form of exercise to me. I was not interested in the meditative or spiritual aspects of practice. I still resist meditation even though I understand its benefits to others.
Seeking greater challenge, I signed up for yoga teacher training. I looked at it as the equivalent of signing up to run a marathon thereby forcing myself into months of training. My goal was the finish line not enlightenment. It was in this teacher training course that I became more aware of the quiet suffering of others. My focus on the goal of completion was missing the point for most of my fellow students.
As is often the case in life, joining one group connects you with another and another and so on. Slowly, as I met more people in the yoga community, and heard or read their personal stories, I came to understand how many people use yoga(and other forms of physical exercise) as a substitute drug or as a means to deaden the pain. Family trauma, physical or sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and substance use issues are often present beneath the surface. The more you learn about these challenges the more you learn about how people cope.
The most important point I have learned is that no two paths are the same. There is not one solution that fits all situations or all people. A running partner once told me that - as runners - we are all on our own personal journey. Success for one person may be running a marathon. Success for someone else could be running a mile. Neither is better or more valid than the other. The danger I have come across, as I have learned more about the industry surrounding personal growth and healing, is the human need to find that one fix, that one tool, that will smooth all the rough edges at once. There is also the danger that some people are willing to offer their way as the one true path.
In my twenties and thirties I spent a lot of money and time buying and reading books by famous successful people in an effort to figure out how they did it. What’s the secret? In the sense of achieving career or financial success, the only consistent theme I discovered is the approach of never giving up. Always find new situations to insert yourself into. Always work hard. Create opportunities for good things to happen. But there is no guarantee that this approach will lead to success in conventional terms. It is only a pattern I have detected in my own research. Conventional success is often the result of an uneven mixture of hard work and chance.
In the search for happiness, I have found it is most useful to stay open to new ideas no matter where they come from. Almost everyone you meet carries with them not only their own burdens, but some bit of wisdom they can purposely, or accidentally, pass on through casual conversation. Always be listening. Choose advice the way you choose items from a menu, based on what you think will work for you. Reject the idea that there is one answer to all problems, or one right way to live your life, but don’t refuse to listen to someone who professes to have all the answers. Wrapped inside such a person’s advice, may be the one small piece of information that fits your particular puzzle.
The search for one universal answer to life’s challenges can be a mistake, but you can cobble together your own answer based on the experiences, mistakes, and wisdom of everyone you meet. Remember, even those with sage advice are offering that advice from the place of their own journey through their own challenges.