The Rollercoaster Torture

An Assembling God’s Puzzle video

By Fr. Garry Richmeier, C.PP.S.

I remember one Sunday a number of years back. I was preaching at mass like usual. After mass, someone came up to me and complimented me on my homily. It wasn’t just a passing compliment, because they explained how what I had said resonated with their experience and how it had helped them see God at work in their life. Well, I was feeling pretty good about that, and was secretly patting myself on the back about my skill at getting the gospel message across to people. Two days later, a letter came in the mail for me. It was from a parishioner who was very upset with something I had said in that same homily. They said that I had completely misinterpreted Jesus’ words, and was almost guilty of preaching heresy.

I went from the “high” of feeling like the best preacher, to the “low” of feeling like the worst preacher. That experience is an example from my life of what I call “the rollercoaster torture.”

Life is full of ups and downs, like a roller coaster, and that fact is a piece of life’s puzzle that we must deal with. Depending on how we deal with it, it can be torture, or it can be simply another difficult aspect of life to be navigated. How do we avoid the torture?

Although we have all experienced the ups and downs of life many times, there seems to be something in us that says it shouldn’t be that way. Especially when we encounter the “downs,” we tend to think there is something wrong — something wrong with me, with others, with the world, or even something wrong with God. And we feel we must affix blame for what is wrong.

We then find ourselves living in a reality we see as bad, flawed, and “wrong,” and having to live with whoever we blame for making the world that way. And we cannot do anything about it. There is no way to be happy in that kind of world. That is a tortured existence.

To lessen the torture, a person must change or “tweak” their thought that things shouldn’t go up and down. This can be done by consciously looking over the past and recognizing that ups and downs have always been there, and are in fact “normal,” just like weather can be sunny or rainy. It doesn’t make the up/down experience any more pleasant, but it can help eliminate the unpleasant belief that we live in flawed universe built simply to torture us.

We also cause ourselves unnecessary suffering when we experience an “up” and believe we can hold on to it, that it will last forever. If we nurture that illusion, we can be doubly devastated when life’s rollercoaster takes the inevitable dive to the bottom. Ridding ourselves of that illusion enables us to enjoy the “ups” while they last, but not participate in the futility of trying to make them last forever. Attempting the impossible in this way is a major source of frustration and self-torture.

On the flip side, having a solid sense that nothing ever remains the same can make the down times less tortuous. When we experience difficult times, the thought/feeling arises that it will be that way forever. That thought can exponentially increase our worry and suffering. Dealing with the difficulty in the present moment feels awful enough. If we think it will never end, then we are apt to feel awful about our entire future. And that is real torture. Change is the only constant in the universe. All things pass. Holding on to these truths can lessen the pain and suffering of life’s rollercoaster dips.

There will always be ups and downs in life. And the ups will always feel better than the downs. But how we look at, and think about the rollercoaster of life will determine whether we experience torture, or experience the normal, ordinary (and sometimes unpleasant) flow of life.

All of the videos in this series can be found here: Assembly God’s Puzzle.

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[Fr. Garry Richmeier, a Precious Blood priest and spiritual director, holds a Master’s of Divinity Degree from St John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, and a Master’s of Counseling Psychology degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is a licensed professional counselor and a licensed marriage and family therapist.]

Illustration ID 166412817 © Artur Kutskyi | Dreamstime.com — The Rollercoaster Torture — An Assembling God’s Puzzle video

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