I’ve been most fortunate to have many wonderful teachers. I don’t believe I can put one above all the rest, since the strength of each teaching (and thus the influence of its teacher) really depended upon my own capacity to be teachable in that moment. This remains true for me to this day.

What does it mean to be teachable? I suppose it’s a mix of being willing to let go of old ideas, being open to changing patterns of behaviour, being willing to take calculated (or uncalculated!) risks in the face of fears, doubts, and past programming. Being teachable means being able to follow the lesson through.

I was younger than most when I was starting to have problems with alcohol. Was I paying attention to the lesson? Absolutely not! In spite of the way my personality changed and how my moral compass started to go all wacko while under its influence, alcohol worked more as a solution than as a bearer of problems. At least, that’s how my brain saw it. Alcohol erased my inhibitions, solving my social anxiety. Alcohol turned-off the constant noise in my head from an ADHD brain on overdrive. Alcohol numbed my psychic pain, resolving my lingering shame and guilt (yeah, often the result of my behaviour during previous drinking episodes). Alcohol shut-down my hyper-vigilance, a symptom of PTSD. Alcohol gave me the false courage to make risky decisions, solving my fearful inclination toward timidity steeped in self-doubt.

Those who loved me saw the writing on the wall. “Eric, I don’t like how you change when you’re drinking…. It’s like you become a different person when you’re drinking.” I heard this and similar from friends and family. I was only in my early twenties. I wouldn’t even begin to address my problem with alcohol until I spent my 38th birthday in a medical detox treatment centre.

What led me to getting sober in the first place? Easy answer: The pain of the way I had been living became greater than the fear of how painful my life would be without my ‘solution to all life’s problems’. I had to drink my way into pain so desperate that it was enough to open me to being willing to change.

So, to answer the daily prompt: My most influential teacher has been pain. Pain not only delivers the teaching but it also softens me up enough to be teachable in the first place.

Pain is a call; the response is healing. When we whack our shin, our first reaction is to put our hands on the pain. When someone we love hurts, our first reaction is to embrace them. Were it not for pain, stepping on a shard of glass with bare feet would be fatal—we’d bleed out and fall unconscious before discovering what happened.

Our feral mind seeks to avoid pain by any means necessary. It equates pain with suffering. Our wise mind learns that pain is a condition of birthing new life, that pain is a call to healing action, and that pain is often the toll we pay to get from where we are to where we need to be.

Pain is not suffering. The only way out of pain is through. Any other way leads to suffering. By going through pain, we invoke forces of healing and growth, we act with wise mind not feral mind.

‘This too shall pass’ becomes our mantra. It may do so like a kidney stone, but it will pass. And we trust that in going through pain, we avoid needless suffering, and we know that a life lesson will be our reward for finding the courage to change the thing that needs to change.