Things happen all the time that are outside of our control. From bug bites to job loss to illness and death, we erect altars to happiness and talismans against suffering. 

When negative experiences occur, the aversion is reflexive. Our sympathetic nervous systems get triggered, producing hormones like cortisol and norepinephrine that facilitate action and self-protection.

Our minds react in kind with anxiety about the impact of the experience, fear about the repercussions, projections into the future regarding the possible impacts and wishing the experience would be other than it is:

"When touched with a feeling of pain, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person sorrows, grieves, & laments, beats his breast, becomes distraught. So he feels two pains, physical & mental. Just as if they were to shoot a man with an arrow and, right afterward, were to shoot him with another one, so that he would feel the pains of two arrows; in the same way, when touched with a feeling of pain, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person sorrows, grieves, & laments, beats his breast, becomes distraught. So he feels two pains, physical & mental...

Now, the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones, when touched with a feeling of pain, does not sorrow, grieve, or lament, does not beat his breast or become distraught. So he feels one pain: physical, but not mental. Just as if they were to shoot a man with an arrow and, right afterward, did not shoot him with another one, so that he would feel the pain of only one arrow. In the same way, when touched with a feeling of pain, the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones does not sorrow, grieve, or lament, does not beat his breast or become distraught. He feels one pain: physical, but not mental..."
​
"Sallatha Sutta: The Arrow" (SN 36.6), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight, 30 June 2010,http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn36/sn36.006.than.html 

We tend not to speak about the things we need to speak about the most, confined by shame to the prisons of our own minds. It is from inside these prisons that we project our doubts and insecurities onto the world.
​
​Social media has a way of making it seem like everyone has their shit together. Can that be possible? If over 50% of marriages end up in divorce, does that statistic not apply to Facebook users? Is Facebook the panacea for all failed relationships?

Here are some things that we usually don't see on social media:

• I'm scared and unprepared.
• I miss being just the two of us.
• I'm exhausted and fed up.
• I wish we waited longer.
• Our sex life sucks.
• Lactation without copulation.