“Ride the pain like a wave,” my therapist says. Don’t push against it, just let it come and go.
So sometimes, I imagine myself on a surfboard, watching for waves in the distance. Waves are bumpy, unpredictable. They can be big in the case of tsunamis but small like ripples by the shore on a calm night.
There’s a cadence to a lot of things I appreciate in life. The Poisson distribution of the interval between waves in the pacific ocean, the rhythm of my skis on the snow, the ups and downs of the credit cycle and business cycle, the transition from day to night, the performance of the equity markets. Lately, the cycle I’ve been trying to fight is the movement of my mood, from suicidally depressed to ecstatic and hopeful. Recently, there’s been a lot of volatility. The switch from high to low is instantaneous, and the smallest trigger will set off a tidal wave. It’s like I’m used to skiing down green runs and doing great, but all of a sudden I’m skiing down the alpine on a mogul-filled double black run. My skis are louder, I’m forced to bend and extend like I’ve never before.
In skiing, you can’t bend unless you extend, you can’t make it down the mountain unless you’re willing to take the risk and have confidence to make turns…unless you wanna go down in a death wedge, I suppose. Nearly impossible down a double black mogul run.
So I take a deep breath, and I let gravity pull my skis down. It’s daunting, I’m not sure if I’m in control. But slowly, I catch the rhythm.
I’m trying to ride the wave instead of trying to resist it because in a fight against the ocean, humans almost inevitably lose. I can stand up on my board and ride it. Sometimes, I will feel scared and unconfident. Sometimes, I want to go to the shore. But going to the shore means calling it a day, missing out on all the beauty of the ocean.
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