To escape or endure? Why knowing the difference makes all the difference
I’m not sure I know of two concepts more different that tie as closely together as escaping and endurance.
Though they appear like opposites, they’re contingent on each other, always working in juxtaposition. Choosing one will either be the right choice or make you wish you chose the other. They’re always on opposing shoulders, a 50/50 coin flip that holds your future in where it lands.
The reason why it’s important to get a grasp on these two simplistically complicated concepts is because they’re directly related to our growth and maturation as individuals and contributors to society.
Lives have been stagnated and put on hold or enhanced and liberated, all based on how these ideas have been implemented.
Contrary to popular belief, we don’t make the decisions that best benefit us. We choose systems, people, jobs, family, substances, and a myriad of many other things to rule our life, keeping us tied down when we should escape.
Conversely, we end up escaping situations that could have proved beneficial because we don’t know how to cope and endure.
It’s a cycle that can become an antagonizing game of hit and miss if a certain set of principals, principals that act as a guide — a compass, if you will — are not mastered.
And happiness happens to be the first and most fundamental of these principals.
Happiness
Always remember: choose happy. It’s so rudimentary yet so easily dismissed. For the life of me, I’ll never understand why we compromise such a basic and true emotion for attention, money, other’s opinions, or anything.
We become so invested in what we’ve built, how much we’ve toiled, and what we’ve already decided on, that we fall victim into thinking we’re obligated to those choices; that we’re subjected to that life.
We must empower ourselves to make decisions in our best interest, regardless of who likes it or not.
Whether it’s an abusive relationship, low paying job, or cigarettes, if you’re ever stuck between the choice of escaping and enduring and your happiness is at stake, choose happy.
Responsibility
The second principal to be aware of is responsibility. While you don’t want the fear of bills to be the only reason you’re working for an employer, quitting because it’s hard or because it’s not what you want to do right now, while having financial responsibilities, is foolish.
The same goes for our interactions with people or the day to day tasks we must accomplish: I’ve seen people quit relationships at the first sign of hardship, quit jobs because of a boss who “didn’t like them,” and avoid paperwork and errands because it was too overwhelming.
Imagine never doing taxes or improving your credit score simply because it sounds like it’ll be stressful. Those people are out there.
Just like it’s important to choose happiness, it’s just as important to test toughness. Difficulty and oppression are too different things. Just because we’re not assimilating or finding the success as fast as we’d like to, does not mean we’re supposed to flee the scene.
Hard conversations, hard work, and hard times are inevitable. If we’re conditioned to go the opposite way when they arise, we’ll end up going nowhere.
The moment we learn to take a second and see situations for what they’re worth and what we can gain, instead of severing ties, we’ll start seeing our lives change for the best.
Logic
That leads me to the third principal: logic.
It takes a certain self-awareness and honesty to know when to escape and when to endure. It takes reason relative to the uniqueness of that situation, and it’s something we all possess.
Whether you have to risk temporarily being without a job to get away from where you’re unappreciated. You may even have to put down the booze or say no to going out for awhile.
Or, it could be that you have to endure criticism from co-workers that don’t mean well or discriminations that are out of your control. Either way, choosing when to escape and when to endure is a judgment call we’re all equipped to make.
We’re quick to use excuses and blame external factors for where we are in life and to explain how we’ve managed to miss out on opportunities that “should’ve been ours,” but we’ll fail to mention how we completely misjudged when to escape and when to endure.
Even right now, I’m sure you’re faced with decisions and situations that are presenting you these very two options.
Just remember to choose happiness, remember responsibility, and use logic, and you’ll find that you have more control over the situation than you think.