When easy becomes avoidance

Good morning,

I’ve had a house full of people these last few days. Family and friends staying with us, people coming and going, food being prepared, things being tidied up, conversations happening, dogs wandering around amongst everyone, and the usual routines pretty much disappearing.

I love having people around, but I was reminded how much easier life is when you only have yourself to think about.

When you have a family, there are certain things you simply have to do. People need feeding. Things need paying. Someone needs picking up. Something breaks. Work still needs doing. The dogs still need walking. You can put some things off, of course, but eventually life has a rather good way of putting them back in front of you.

I’ve been experiencing a bit of that myself recently with money. For quite a while, I realised I’d developed a habit of not wanting to look too closely at the finances. I knew roughly what was happening, but when things felt uncomfortable, there was always something else I could do instead.

And I’m particularly good at finding something else to do.
I can work on the platform. I can create something. I can edit something. I can speak to somebody. I can convince myself I’m having a very productive day while quietly avoiding the thing that’s making me uncomfortable.

Recently, I’ve started doing the opposite. Every morning I open my big notebook and write down where the money is. What’s come in. What’s gone out. What’s outstanding. Who I’ve spoken to. What needs following up.
Nothing particularly revolutionary, but I’ve noticed something.

The thing I was avoiding generally feels much bigger before I look at it than it does afterwards.

And that’s got me thinking about how incredibly easy we’ve become at avoiding things. There is nearly always an alternative now. We’re bored, so we scroll. We’re uncomfortable, so we distract ourselves. We don’t want to go somewhere, so something can be delivered. We don’t know something, so we ask AI. We don’t particularly want to deal with something today, and quite often modern life provides a way of getting around it.

Some of that is wonderful. I use these things every day. They’ve made parts of my life considerably easier. But I’ve started wondering whether there is a point where making life easier stops helping us.

Because some of the things I value most about myself today haven’t come from making things easier. They’ve come from having to deal with things.

Businesses going wrong. Relationships changing. Money being tight. Raising children. Making mistakes. Difficult conversations. Starting again. Sitting with something I’d much rather run away from.

I wouldn’t volunteer to go through some of those things again. But I also wouldn’t remove them from my life if doing so meant removing what they taught me.

Perhaps there’s something important in the ordinary act of dealing with things. Not because struggle is somehow noble, and not because life needs to be unnecessarily difficult, but because every time we face something we’d rather avoid, we learn a little more about ourselves.

Can I deal with this? Can I make the decision? Can I have the conversation? Can I sit with the uncomfortable feeling without immediately needing to make it disappear? Can I take responsibility for something even when nobody is standing over me making me do it?

I’m 58, and I’m still discovering things I’ve become rather good at avoiding. Money has been one of them.
I’m learning to look.
And strangely, the more I look, the less frightening it becomes.

Maybe that’s the thought I’m sitting with this Wednesday. The things that make our lives easier aren’t necessarily the problem. Perhaps it’s simply worth noticing when easy becomes avoidance.

Because sometimes the thing we’re trying not to look at is exactly the thing we need to face.

Have a good Wednesday.

Stefan