Endurance as a bridge

I had a significant dream last night about endurance. My definition of endurance is as follows: the bridge between survival and greatness.

This is something I’ve struggled with with for a long, long time in my Life. There are times in Life when things are going smoothly, we are over the moon, and everything seems simple. When we feel that way, we are in this very positive emotional state of Being, and whatever we do, or anybody we encounter turns into a joyful moment.

There are other times, when things seem not to go smoothly, we feel low, helpless, lonely, and we don’t see how we can get out of this “problem”. Like I mentioned in my previous post, there are no problem, just wrong definitions and beliefs. But still, this does not remove the discomfort we experience during this time.

When we feel that way, days are dragging, long and dark, and we wonder why we have to go through that. For us, it seems like this is something happening to us. As we know, things are always happening for us, not to us.

We start questioning everything. Ourselves, our commitments, our community, our dedication to an activity, our workout, our relationships. Are we heading in the right, or wrong direction? Are we flowing with Life? Are we following the plan?

When those states of Being arise, we tend to look for a quick way out. We redirect our energy to fight or flight, and we are looking at escaping the situation straight away like a caveman that would be facing a sabre tooth tiger. We don’t pause; we rush. Rushing is never a good option.

When we feel that way, we also look for a reason to live. What are the things that would make me worthy of living our Life? We search for it; we look for it on the outside. Anything. Like a house in the forest in the middle of nowhere. A heart connection with a partner. A healthy and sane family. A marathon. A trip to our dream destination. They are all legit.

We also look for a reason worth dying for. What would we do in our lives that would make us forget everything, except for this one thing that is worth dying for? This one thing that obliterates everything around us that we must absolutely fulfill? Could it be what we call purpose?

Life is a long road made of detours, roadblocks, and various encounters. Endurance is like a muscle that kicks in to keep propelling the momentum forward. This primal energy that guides us to move forward that comes from the depths of our Being. With that, we have the power to endure anything as human beings.

When our circumstances are hard, we must act with endurance, with patience, with courage. Knowing everything is impermanent and nothing lasts, we are aiming at doing the best we can, always with a mindset that allows us to see ourselves in the future. We don’t know HOW, but it will happen, It could take weeks, months or years, it will happen, because we keep showing up every single day. And when we show up every day, this is endurance. When we decide to confront our deepest fears, our suffering, this is endurance. Viktor Frankl talks about it in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, that when we are stripped away from everything we believed was acquired, endurance keeps us sane and propels us towards our greater purpose of Being.

When we are confronted with a tough situation, within ourselves or on the outside, we should know that this is an opportunity to reach a higher timeline and to never go back to what we did not prefer. The real work does not starts when everything is going well in our Life. It actually starts when things get dark, when we feel unease, uncertainty. This is when endurance shows up, and we must take it and use it as a powerful weapon to cross the river, go through the waves, and make it to land safely. When we use this, there is nothing to be afraid of anymore, because we know that no matter what, we’ve trained for a whole lifetime already.

Some people around us will be afraid, jealous or envious by our endurance, and this is not something we need to worry about. By moving forward no matter what, making the conscious choice to not entertain fear and to embody our Truth, we’ll be sending a powerful message out there that we’re heading towards greatness.

With love and gratitude,

Caroline

© Caroline Caanl 2025. All rights reserved.