My Surgery

I had to choose whether to undergo surgery or not a couple of years ago. I was in pain most of the time, but it was on the borderline between tolerable and intolerable. I could either choose to live with that pain or to undergo the surgery that could either solve everything but had a chance of failure, leaving me -at least- in the same position, adding to that the possibility of complications and infections, and the certainty of post-surgery pain and immobility that could last a few weeks.

The choices were as follows: Certainty of constant moderate pain without the surgery, or the uncertainty of a surgery that could either eliminate all the pain or leave me slightly worse off.

I decided to undergo the surgery. Recovery was painful and took a while, but I was left a stronger person afterward. I could continue to live my life normally thanks to that surgery.

I recently read the phrase by Seneca, A stoic philosopher born around 4 BC, which says:

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

In the same way I chose to undergo the difficult surgery that was painful and weakened me for a good amount of time but left me stronger and better afterward, I have the choice, daily and hourly, to undergo what is difficult to my mind, that might make me feel weaker, inferior, and incapable at the moment, but eventually leave me a better person.

Over the past years, I was in situations where I could choose: one choice made my heart beat from fear, gave me nausea, dampened my appetite, and woke me up in the middle of the night, and the other was to just "not do it," and to hell with all of that stress and fear...anyway, I was doing just fine most of the time, so why bother?! However, I did my best and honest attempt to always choose the choice which scared me, and to do it truthfully and to the best of my ability.

By doing so, I found out a couple of things. First, I found truth in Carl Jung's phrase "the fool is the precursor to the savior". Second, there might be more to you than you think, and thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, while difficult things did not stop scaring me when I faced them -especially when they are in domains that I didn't participate in before- I became aware of my ability to survive beyond the fear. When I face fear, I can recall a previous difficult experience in which I had similar fear and nausea, that turned into strength and ability afterward, and that gives me the courage and knowledge that I will "survive" what comes next. It is a powerful mental model which draws from my personal experience.

Of course, failure is an option, but the failure of the experiment to prove the correctness of a hypothesis does not mean the failure of the experiment, since it provided us with new and relevant information. I think that there is usually too little to be feared from failure.