hurdles and obstacles

I grew up thinking that in order to become more resilient, to become stronger and more able, you had to overcome external obstacles, the things that lay across your path. Life was a series of obstacles that had to be stepped over or around in order to reach your goal. It took me a few decades to work out that it was the other way around, and that because the hurdles that mattered were inside myself, what held me back was me.

Hurdles and obstacles are different things. An obstacle is something that blocks your path and that stops you moving forward. A hurdle is something that you confront in yourself, a resistance that has to be surmounted before you can move on. As anyone over a certain age knows, it can be easier to overcome an obstacle in the world than it is to straddle a hurdle in oneself. This is because we put the hurdle there for good reason in the first place. We put it there to make life feel less threatening and to keep us safe in an uncertain world. Why then would we want to remove it?

Often enough, the hurdle that we erect in order to feel safe and calm has a secondary effect of blocking our creativity. However, because this block is erected internally, months or years may go by before anyone notices that your creativity is on hold. The tax office soon contacts you when you fail to file a return. The council sends a letter with a transparent window when they want your dog’s registration fee or quarterly rates. However, it’s no-one else’s job to tap you on the shoulder and ask when you last did something just for the sake of it – a swim in the sea, a cake for a friend, a dance in the kitchen, a song in the car.

Rather than surmounting obstacles in the world, it’s overcoming hurdles in oneself – whether that hurdle is busyness, fear of embarrassment or rejection, or a skills shortfall – that gives you the resilience that makes it easier to get up in the morning and face the world with a smile.

I have a plan for the festive season which is now, scarily, on the horizon. At the next party or event I attend, instead of skirting around the ‘What do you do?’ question, I plan to ask whomever I’m talking to what they like doing best. I’m willing to bet that their answer won’t be filing their tax return, that their response will surprise us both, and that I’ll leave the conversation with a clearer sense of who that person is than if they’d explained to me what they do for a living.

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