The world is a beautiful but sometimes cruel place. It gives us love, beauty, friendship, and countless marvels of nature. But it can also be torturous.
Even if we’re fortunate enough to sleep in a warm bed, walk safely down the street, and fill our cups with preferred food and drink, we are not in the clear. Family troubles await us, as do friendship complications, work stresses, school anxieties, financial worries.
The troubling thing about troubles is that almost anything can become troublesome.
What are we to do in such moments? How can we pull ourselves out of a slump when there is no one there to lift us up? Even when family and friends abound, sometimes, the troubles still gnaw at us from within. What then? How do we get through a difficult time?
Some turn to God, others to science, others to the Internet or the advice of a know-it-all or at least a well-meaning friend. Helpful resources, these may be, but even the best external balms can do little to cure inner wounds.
Yes, luck often plays a rather large hand in dealing our share of particular woes. Some are born into money; others, beauty. Still others, an unteachable charisma that works as a magic key for getting a promotion, finding true love, or getting upgraded on every flight. But anyone who’s ever read a children’s book or even mediocre literature knows that neither money nor beauty nor fame can buy happiness.
Because happiness is a lot like troubles: It comes from within.
So when life is troubling you, fate seems against you, and Lady Luck is never on your side, don’t let yourself despair for too long, for you have a trick up your sleeve no one can match: you.
1 Find comfort in knowing your problems aren’t unique
We valorize the word “unique,” but sometimes there’s a great relief in knowing we are but one among many.
This doesn’t mean our troubles are insignificant; it means they are surmountable. If other people decades prior and oceans away have faced the same troubles that keep us awake tonight, then, surely, we, too, can overcome them.
“How will I pay rent next month?” “Am I going to end up alone?” “When will they notice me?”
Much of human strife can be categorized thusly: worrying about money, love, or a greater sense of purpose. Yet as we ourselves face existential dread, it’s as if we are the very first to feel its weight. No one’s ever faced such an ordeal before us nor suffered a heartbreak like ours. No one’s ever been so without hope.
But, more often than not, our problems are not unique. Somewhere in the expanse of time and space, someone else has, is, or will feel their heart break as ours is, lose a loved one, cringe from embarrassment, get let down.
Accepting that our troubles are, in many ways, commonplace doesn’t deny us the right to feel them deeply, but it can help us face them with a calmer perspective. If others have so suffered and prevailed, we can, too.
2 Remind yourself that nothing lasts forever
For better or for worse, nothing lasts forever.
In good times, I rewrite this motto in my journal to remind myself to appreciate the people, places, and treasures around me. Friends I’m now close with who, one day, will no longer be part of my everyday life — not because we’ll have a falling out or lose that unspoken fondness for each other, but because life will simply march on. Coffee dates that now seem ordinary will become fond memories of the past. Blurry photos from blurry Friday nights will become hazy relics we blow the dust off of every few months. Then every few years. Then less and less often until most fade from our storytelling repertoire.
The same motto serves me when times are tough, for every bout of depression I’ve lived, every lonely season, every year without much purpose or many friends, each has turned out to be but a brief period in the grand scheme of life that one day met its natural end. I discovered new faces, changed locations, explored new hobbies, and sooner or later, found the light again.
Each time, it was waiting right around the corner. Though there was no hint of a new relationship about to bloom or an evening that would warm my soul for weeks, still, they came. All on their own, the good times simply came.
3 Confide in someone (it doesn’t even have to be a friend)
It is inexplicably easier, sometimes, to pour our hearts out to a stranger than it is to a trusted friend.
Talking to a friend, somehow, gives permanence to our words and, by extension, our troubles. We will surely see them again, and a considerate friend will surely follow up on our confessions. A stranger, less so.
Of course, a stranger isn’t always prepared to listen. But every now and then, fate strikes. An acquaintance at a party makes that secret part of you that never could reveal itself before feel seen. You never meet them again, but as they leave, they take a heavy weight from your shoulders with them.
Or maybe you stumble into a conversation at the corner coffee shop. There’s an elderly woman who drinks plain black coffee and is too far removed from modern day to understand your stresses about spreadsheets or the young person’s dating hellscape. But she listens. She nods in the right places and gives you a smile that, for the first time in a while, doesn’t feel like someone’s obligatory pleasantry. You leave with your cappuccino and, for the first time in a while, optimism.
4 Return to the real world (that is, the one offline)
When going through a difficult time, it’s easy to assume everyone else is walking on a cloud. After all, what do they have to be concerned about? They haven’t the stresses you do: the taxing job, the hair that doesn’t cooperate, the disappointing bank account, the nonexistent love life.
But if looking in the mirror is difficult, peering out the window isn’t going to help.
So close the curtains — that is, the curtains to the screen. Stop looking at social media. Stop romanticizing strangers’ lives and critiquing your own. Stop imagining how buoyant and beautiful you’d be if you could just buy something new. Stop feeding the beast that tells you what you have isn’t enough.
Above all, stop turning to the screen to try to drown yourself out: scrolling in the grocery line, looping background music while you cook, shoving a podcast in your ears the moment you step outside, anything so you don’t have to face a moment of silence with your own thoughts.
In difficult times, escapism is a tempting reprieve, but it is temporary. Finding peace requires coming home to ourselves.
Making it through hard times starts with coming back to yourself
Wherever you go, there you are. No matter where we run, what we consume, or how we try to numb ourselves to our realities, there is no escaping what lies within. Though confronting the inner angst, loneliness, disappointment, or resentment that may be eating you is daunting on a good day, flight is no path to contentment. It takes you and you alone to get there.
Getting off social media and silencing the voices that distract, confuse, and belittle me has made it easier for me to listen to myself and weather the difficult times. Going cold turkey, however, isn’t for everyone. This is how I quit social media and brought more calm back to my life.
For another perspective, see how my dear friend Shelby DiNoble took a step back from social media and, in doing so, what he learned about himself.
Now when the difficult times make a reappearance (as they always do), I seek beauty to ease my spirit. These poems about new beginnings are a favorite I pull from my bookshelf often. For really low moments when I want to remind myself it’s never too late to turn things around, one of these quotes about feeling alone is ready with its wisdom.