When something hurts us and when we feel pain, our instinct is to get away from it as soon as possible. Or not look at it at all.

From a biological perspective, this makes sense. Early in life we learned that when we touch a hot surface, we can save ourselves from being burned if we quickly pull our hand away. We are wired for survival.

But our emotional life is more complex than that. We’ve been graced and cursed with the gift of awareness, and so something else comes into play. When it comes to matters of the heart, turning away from pain does not serve us.

This summer, I spent almost a week with my aging parents. I’ve been on quite an emotional journey with them, especially around forgiveness, and I feel I’ve done a lot of work to clear out my own crap from the relationship equation.

So what is left? Watching the truth of their lives as it is, right now.

My mom is 84, my dad is 82. They are getting old. It is not a graceful process. Bit by bit, they have a harder time doing things I take for granted, like going up and down the stairs, washing dishes, taking out the dog.

It’s painful to watch things fall apart in their lives, and their sense of helplessness. We skirt around this and don’t really talk about it. There aren’t plans in place should one or both of them be unable to take care of themselves.

My instinct is to not deal with any of this.

I think of other painful situations in my life that I’ve worked hard to ignore. Problems in an intimate relationship that I neatly tucked under the rug. Conflicts with a co-worker that I didn’t deal with. In nearly every case, my evasion of suffering ended up making the suffering worse.

Of course, each of us has our own way of doing this. My modus operandi is avoidance and denial, the “flight” response. Yours might be more of the “fight” response. You may find yourself banging your head against the wall of undesired events in your own life. Either way, this road leads us to the same place.

This happens on an individual level, but also collectively. As a society, for example, we have refused to look at the truth of climate change and how our patterns of consumption contribute to it. Instead we indulge our desire for short-term gratification and continue this pattern of avoidance.

So what’s to be done?

During our summer Buddhist Chaplaincy training at Upaya, Zen priest Alan Senauke noted how this dynamic is similar to what happens when we drive in snow and hit an icy patch. Our natural instinct is to step on the brake and steer away, but this only makes things worse. What actually helps is what is most counterintuitive – to turn into the skid. But this is something we can only know through training.

This bit of driving wisdom translates to our life. Meditation or some other kind of awareness practice is the training we can draw on to help us remember a simple truth: being present to ourselves and another, through suffering, is the only way to liberate ourselves from suffering.

Simple. But not so easy.

The big epiphany I had while hanging out at my parents’ house was this: We don’t get to choose our spiritual lessons. They choose us. Resistance is futile. Acceptance and surrender are the keys to navigating these zones, just as they are in love.

When I was younger, I used to go out seeking spiritual lessons in a spectacular, “Oh wow!” kind of way, like trekking to Tibet to circumambulate a sacred mountain.

Now I see they’re right in front of me all the time in more subtle but profound ways. I look at the road I have to go down with my parents in the coming years. Instead of “Oh, wow,” I think, “Oh shit.”

And yet, it’s all okay. All that is required is my presence.

I’d love to hear if this post resonates for you — are there some big spiritual lessons looming in your life right now that you need to turn toward? What helps you to do that? Please share your wisdom in the comments below…

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