The two darts (DW#506)
All of us experience pain in our lives. Pain is what happens when an event or situation outside our control causes us distress. For example, we get a headache, our car breaks down, someone betrays our trust, we lose our job. All of these are events that cause pain.
Events such as these are the first darts that life throws at us.
The second darts are how we respond to these events, what we think about them and what we tell ourselves.
If our car breaks down for example, this would be the first dart.
Some examples of second darts are if we tell ourselves:
The reality of the situation is this: we cannot do anything about the fact our car broke down. Life will always throw first darts at us.
How we think about the situation and what we tell ourselves will greatly determine how much suffering we endure in the face of the first dart.
Each time we buy into the thoughts above about the car, we make the experience of the car breakdown even worse. We add fuel to the fire. Now, it’s not just the pain from the first dart we are experiencing; we are also hitting ourselves with a bunch of second darts that are causing us to suffer.
It is a REALLY valuable exercise to start distinguishing between first and second darts in life.
As it is said, "Pain is Inevitable. Suffering is Optional."
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