You’re in between jobs or somebody got sick or you can’t afford to move but in any case, you’re stuck. Maybe you’re in the military or maybe you’re in jail but you can’t just pickup and go; you can’t yet turn to the next page in the story of your life.

These are hard times.

If you’re a restless like me, stuck-ness is one of the hardest things to deal with. I get island fever without being anywhere near an island. There’s a special kind of Groundhog Day hell to an involuntary sequestration; every day winds up being ominously like every other day with no end in sight and you start to ruminate about just how really stuck you are.

There are two points of context that may make your situation more tolerable.

Choose how to respond.

You can choose how respond to every circumstance even if you have no control over the circumstance itself.

Gandalf knew this (Gandalf knew just about everything). When Frodo whined, “I wish it need not have happened in my time.” Gandalf replied, “So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”1

Of course, Gandalf was correct (he is Gandalf, after all). When you come across hard times, show some personal responsibility and make something of it. Learn a new skill, start a new business, resurrect an old hobby. Take time to more fully explore your surroundings or rekindle an old friendship. Read. Draw. Practice (or learn to play) your instrument. Work out. Run.

The only thing better than getting unstuck from hard times is getting unstuck and having a new and improved skill set. Choose to let hard times actually improve who you are as a human being. It’s your life; you can do whatever the hell you want.

And there is something else – maybe more important in the long run – you can do when stuck in hard times.

Choose to assign meaning.

Choose to let this bit of suffering add context to your purpose. Allow your stuck-ness to inform your meaning.

Take a step back and look at the big picture here. You will likely find that being stuck is exactly what you need, even if it’s not what you want. Maybe you were on the wrong path, beating your head against an existential wall when you could more easily change direction and just go around it. Maybe you need to take the time to learn something new to truly get to where you want to be.

There just might be a reason for this stop-over. Hard times seem less hard when you realize they force you to stop and add some ingredient you were missing in your search for a meaningful life. Hard times can make your purpose for living easier, if you take the time to understand them.

It may be that you needed to learn something; that this lesson keeps reappearing in your life because you just haven’t figured it out yet. It may be that when you are wise enough to put the experience in it’s proper context, it will stop happening and you can move on to the next lesson.

Hard times are telling you something. To get unstuck, pay attention to the message and realize that you created all of this, that it’s all your responsibility. When you take responsibility, you can assume control.

Do your time, figure it out and move on.

1. Tolkien, J. R. R. (2012). The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the first part of the Lord of the Rings. William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers.

As always, I welcome your thoughts. You can reach me through the comments section on my Substack or Medium accounts or the blog section on my website. If this article as of value to you, please follow my Instagram and Twitter accounts. And be sure to subscribe to my River Of Creation podcast – The Podcast for Creators! – coming later this year.

Be well; do good!

• JWW