Yesterday morning I closed the front door behind me and saw that the bus, which I couldn’t miss, was already arriving. I started running and when I gave extra gas I suddenly noticed that my feet were getting cold. The puddle I raced through was deeper than I thought, the water flowed into my shoes and merino wool socks. I jumped on the bus with my shoes sloshing.
As the adrenaline faded, the suffering came. The soaking wet wool itched and chafed, my toe tips became numb and the cold soaked into the soles of my feet. I had to take the bus for at least another half hour and then an hour by train. I wouldn’t be home until the evening. Taking off shoes and socks and continuing barefoot was not possible, it was too cold for that and so there was nothing to do but to sit it out.
As the chill eroded my bones, I thought of my father’s mother, who, whenever something harmless but unpleasant happened to her (a tax bill, a burnt pork chop, my grandfather), sighed that it was “just suffering for a while,” to ride out the inconvenience for a while. I’ve always thought that was a great attitude. As a child, I often reacted to discomfort with resistance: I got angry, I started crying or my mind (of course only a machine with a very limited number of punch cards) started to think of all kinds of solutions to escape as quickly as possible. Until my grandmother sighed that I should just put up with it. Nothing to worry about, just a bit annoying, nothing more, most showers passed over.
Over the years, “just suffer for a while” became the family motto. Long line at the checkout? Just suffer for a while. Annoying toddler on the tram? Just suffer for a while. Finger in the door? Correct. I started to focus on endurance so that I no longer had to waste energy on emotions or resistance. And so a lot turned out not so bad in the end.
The bus was rocking, it was hailing outside. Of course those soaked shoes and socks were annoying, but the misery was also a project, an exercise, I told myself.
The water seeped into my thermal leggings. I thought about all the previous times I had dry feet and wasn’t grateful for it.
“Just suffer for a while,” I said, so softly that it almost sounded like “just live for a while.” The sun rose and the bus drove slowly into a very long winter day.
Ellen Deckwitz writes an exchange column here with Marcel van Roosmalen.