“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
– Albert Einstein
My friend Jason Kurtz, a psychoanalyst, author, and regular column contributor, is also very good at tennis. I’m not as good, but we have a great time playing against each other. He dominates, but in a way that doesn’t negate nice rallies or healthy competition. Jason has sound fundamentals, strikes the ball well, and when his serve is on, it’s hard to return. But I sometimes get lucky and stave off a sure ace with a swipe of the racket. I’m always surprised when the ball lands over the net on these occasions, and while Jason is too much of a good sport to admit it, I can see he is too.
After we’re done, we always have talks as spirited as the games. But it is me who is more the server, initiating questions and bringing up topics, usually pertaining to psychology and human behavior, Jason’s forte. And in keeping with his well-rounded tennis game, he is an amazing returner when it comes to answers.
For instance, the other day, after we finished two sets (Jason won 6-0, 6-4), I told him about a recent dream of mine. To give context, after thirty or so years of always having a steady job, I find myself unemployed. It was unexpected, as my most recent position as an adjunct professor was not renewed due to curriculum change.
Luckily, at this stage of my life, being out of work is not a financial hardship. But it does leave a void in my time. I began to get anxious about what I might do to fill my schedule. Which probably led to my dream. In it, I was much younger, unemployed, and feeling desperate. This had a basis in reality: my first few years out of college were defined by long stretches of searching for the right job, and bouts of anxiety because of this uncertainty. The dream brought up in me all that past turmoil. It bothered me enough that while driving over to the courts I gave myself an internal “pep talk” – i.e. relax, don’t fall apart, you’ll get through this like you always do.
I shared all this with Jason. When I asked him what he thought about my dream, my growing emotional upset, he came back with an insightful “winner” – for me, that is. I asked him to write again what he told me. Here it is:
Dreams are an attempt by our unconscious to process emotional information. In your dream, your mind reminded you that you have been in this sort of life circumstance before, where you don’t have a job and don’t know what the future holds. When you were younger, this was much more traumatic as it contained the worry of what were you going to do with your life and would you be successful, while now it’s more about what do you want to do with this next stage of your life. Since the situation is similar, it’s natural that some of the anxiety and dream you felt as a young man may be arising now. Your job is to feel your anxiety, feel the feeling of dread, and then remind yourself that this feeling is connected to the past experience, and not your present experience. You need to feel the feeling and dis-confirm it. Holding onto the feeling, while witnessing the current reality, will help your mind and nervous system process the feeling, will help you slowly shed this old skin, and will help you be more fully in this moment, which is more a moment of possibility than danger.
I like this advice. It’s in keeping with my outlook that the only real problems in life are the ones we avoid. Yes, I am no longer an immature twenty-something unsure about a career. But my emotional makeup remains the same. I was a sensitive person prone to anxiety then, and I’m a sensitive person prone to anxiety now. The major change is I now accept this reality. I’m comfortable with it. It’s why I will not be in a rush to get a new job and “fix” my feelings. These feelings, in fact, are my “safety net” – there to catch me and hold me until I’m ready to realize, as Jason said, “a moment of possibility.”
Maybe even, one day, to serve and return as well as he.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
