Pushing through Discomfort

I just got a new tattoo. It wraps around my arm like a growing vine and states: "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams." It is a quote from one of the greatest movies of all time, Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory. Actually, it is also the first line of a poem, "Ode" by English poet, Arthur O'Shaughnessy. The poem in its entirety is to the left.

If you do not care to read the poem, I will cut to the chase. The poem chronicles the struggles of the creative; creating and destroying themselves many times over until at last they must let go of their golden age in order to make room for the next, bringing forth the dreams their fathers scorned while simultaneously scorning the dream of the coming dawn in a vain attempt to cling to glory for a moment more.

As I lay on the table getting my tattoo, feeling the needle pull across my flesh, leaving blood and permanent ink in its wake, I remember my love for this particular kind of pain. It is a vivid pain that your body races to deal with and numb, but in the case of this particular tattoo, cannot. I am not ignoring, but attempting to feel every bit of it. I feel it so that my eyes well up from the beauty this pain courts. This pain is not me. It is pain, and it will pass. That is where the beauty lies; in my ability to feel it deeply and then release it.

Sitting with emotional pain and discomfort is part of coming into your own. Sitting with it, without need to dull it through sex, drugs, alcohol or television, to embrace it and be accepting of yourself is the key to freedom. You come to see that your pain is not you. It is temporary. You can let it go.

Clinging to judgement, to ridicule from others is in essence clinging to other people's pain. It is a waste. This is what happens when you don't accept and own your pain; you throw it at others and try to make yourself believe it is their problem. 

Revel in your discomfort. Push through your pain. Show appreciation for those who would challenge you with theirs. Thank the people who expect you to march to the beat of someone else's rhythm section, then tune into the sounds coming from your gut, from your soul. Even if those tunes are flat or seem discordant with the world, they are yours, and they deserve your care and attention.

According to this poem, the poets are the movers and shakers, the creatives are the builders of cities, but they wrestle with their temporal nature:

"The glory about us clinging
Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing:
O men! it must ever be
That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,
a little apart from ye."

Everything about this life is temporary; pain, power, love, everything in this physical existence will die with you. You gonna hold on to what holds you back until your body dies? You gonna let your pain keep you from your greatness, or are you going to use it to propel you there? 

For after you have embraced and released your pain, you are better. You are stronger. You are smarter and more human.

Push past your discomfort. You will be a better human for yourself and the world. 

 

ODE

We are the music makers,
  And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
  And sitting by desolate streams;--
World-losers and world-forsakers,     
  On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
  Of the world for ever, it seems.


With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,    
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
  Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure     
  Can trample a kingdom down.


We, in the ages lying
  In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
  And Babel itself in our mirth;     
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
  To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
  Or one that is coming to birth.


A breath of our inspiration     
Is the life of each generation;
A wondrous thing of our dreaming
Unearthly, impossible seeming--
The soldier, the king, and the peasant
  Are working together in one,   
Till our dream shall become their present,
  And their work in the world be done.


They had no vision amazing
Of the goodly house they are raising;
They had no divine foreshowing    
Of the land to which they are going:
But on one man's soul it hath broken,
  A light that doth not depart;
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
  Wrought flame in another man's heart.    


And therefore to-day is thrilling
With a past day's late fulfilling;
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted,
And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,     
  Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,
  The dream that was scorned yesterday.


But we, with our dreaming and singing,
  Ceaseless and sorrowless we!     
The glory about us clinging
  Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing:
  O men! it must ever be
That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,    
  A little apart from ye.


For we are afar with the dawning
  And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning
  Intrepid you hear us cry—    
How, spite of your human scorning,
  Once more God's future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning
  That ye of the past must die.


Great hail! we cry to the comers    
  From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers;
  And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
  And things that we dreamed not before:     
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
  And a singer who sings no more.

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