Are you willing to experience all that life offers? Or, do you stubbornly insist in only experiencing the pleasant stuff, the comfort of the known, the ease of the familiar, the certainty of what you already know about?
Pain is a part of the experience of all sentient organisms. Human beings add the extra element of
suffering when we refuse to accept that life entails pain as well as pleasure. When we feel the normal pain of existence, we get upset: This should not be happening. Someone must be to blame! Now, we have added
suffering to the pain.
At the same time that we add suffering to normal life pain, we often romanticize the life of animals in the wild. The reality is that all living organisms have to fight for survival. Survival must be fought for every single day--it does not come easily and without effort. The pain of not being able to catch food, or not being successful at protecting one's mate or offspring from other animals, not finding water to drink, having to fight to ward of predators or competitors, needing protection from intense weather conditions--all of these daily events create pain for animals.
Willingness is the life attitude that accepts that to survive entails effort and struggle, and yes... inevitable pain. In western culture,if something goes "wrong", we look for a culprit. Who can we blame for this outcome? But there is no culprit. Merely the unfolding of life as is.
Willingness as a life attitude is a radical acceptance of life as it is. Not as we would like life to be, but as it is. If we want to live fully we have to be willing to experience fear, anger, self-doubt, inadequacy, all the negative emotions we usually fight to get rid of. If some humans had not been willing to experience fear, we would not have built or flown in the first airplanes, if someone had not been willing to experience one of the most primitive terrors (being confined without natural air) we would not be diving the depth of the ocean with scuba gear. We had to accept that fear was part of the process of innovation and invention. Quite often we deny that these people felt afraid when they pushed into areas of the unknown--but they were, they were afraid
and they acted on what they believed in.
Willingness is a life attitude that says "yes!" to ALL the delightful and awful emotions that arise in the living of life in order to live a life well lived. Are you willing?
