I don’t care who you are. Everyone experiences what Buddhists and Stoics call, The Two Stages Of Pain.

Looking back, you might even realize it now. Think about a time whenever you found yourself getting anxious about something. There was a moment when it originally hit you—you realized that there was something to be anxious about.

That’s stage one.

And then, you fell into that hole. You found yourself succumbing to the pain and being trapped in a thought loop of negative self-talk and pessimism.

That’s stage two.

Seneca talks about this process in his writings titled On Anger. And Buddhist share this in a parable that was found in one of the oldest collections of Buddhist scriptures dated nearly 2,400 years ago.

It goes like this.

In the middle of a battlefield, a solider was struck by an arrow. He proceeded to fall on the ground and scream and yell about the initial pain of being hit.

But after a few minutes, he started to yell out how he was going to die. About how the world was ending and he’d no longer live to see the light of day.

The battlefield soon quieted down and the only noise remaining came from the man who was still crying about how it was over for him. That was until a Buddhist monk came along and stood over him.

The solider looked up at the monk and exclaimed how he was hit. And the monk replied, “There are two types of arrows that strike us in life…”

“The first arrow represents inevitable suffering. Whether that’s physical pain, setbacks, or misfortunes, it happens to everyone because life is unpredictable. This arrow is out of our control.”

“The second arrow represents your reaction to that pain. The additional suffering we create through fear, anger, and overthinking. Unlike the first arrow, we do this to ourselves.”

This parable is a great example as to how our minds work. That sometimes life is going to strike you down and it’s normal to be in shock about it, but it’s up to you to decide if you let it consume you as it did the solider.

Suffering is optional. So don’t think your anxiety is a mental illness or a life sentence. It’s a habit that can be broken like any other.

Until next time,
Isaiah Taylor

Dive Deeper

What I’m Currently Reading - I’m still in the middle of reading George Washingtons biography by Ron Chernow titled Washington: A Life.

Quote Of The Week - “Most people don’t want the truth. They just want constant reassurance that what they believe is the truth.” — Unknown (Keep your mind open to new beliefs)