The Second Arrow

A Story About Suffering, Accepting, and the Choice to Begin Again

I reached out to a friend the other day to see how he was doing. We’d previously talked about a health concern he was dealing with. It didn’t sound life-threatening or life-changing at the time; just something worrisome. Something that needed to be understood and resolved.

His two-sentence reply stopped me cold.

He said he was learning that it was part of something far more serious than I had expected or imagined. Certainly more serious than what I’d sensed in his voice the last time we spoke.

As I reflected on the journey my friend was just beginning, my heart ached for him and his family. The road ahead will be a tough one. I know him to be strong, resilient, and resourceful—but even the strongest of us would be challenged by what lies ahead.

I couldn’t help but think about the tens of thousands of people who face life-changing diagnoses in this country every year: cancer, Parkinson’s, ALS, MS, retinal disease. Then factor in accidents, addiction, divorce, violence, and all the quiet heartbreaks that never make it into a medical journal.

The picture can get bleak, fast.

But the suffering doesn’t tell the whole story.

Because in the middle of all this, something else persists: resilience. Not always physical. Not always loud. But emotional. Spiritual. Human.

As I spoke with my friend, I realized the tone of that initial message wasn’t detachment—it was acceptance. At least in part. My gut tells me denial isn’t completely absent yet. I don’t think it ever disappears all at once. Acceptance takes time. It takes effort. And it will forever ebb and flow. It takes diligence to maintain it.

True acceptance isn’t easy. In fact, it can be one of the hardest lessons to learn.

It doesn’t mean burying painful emotions where they can’t be seen. It means looking directly at the thing that scares you most. Studying it. Learning everything you can about it.

And then, somehow, finding the strength to say, “Okay. If I can’t change this, I can accept this.”

But acceptance doesn’t mean quitting, either. You can accept what you cannot change while still testing the boundaries of what might be possible.

What it isn’t—is denial.

I’ve lived denial. And the truth always finds its way to the surface. The consequences of that can be life-changing. I lived it when my parents died, and my life blew apart.

Finding acceptance is an active process. You can’t just sit back and wait for it to show up. You have to look for it. Sometimes you have to fight for it. And more often than not, the battle is with fear.

But, when you find it, you find peace.

My own journey with retinal disease has been well documented in this blog and in my memoir, so I won’t rehash the details—except to say that even now, as I approach the twelfth anniversary of my diagnosis, and my central vision has reached what I hope is rock bottom, I’m still confronted with challenges around acceptance.

It may be a stretch to call it a blessing, but for me, there’s comfort in certainty. I no longer wonder what it will be like when my central vision is completely gone. For all intents and purposes, it already is. That, and the fact that I’ve lived with this for over a decade, makes acceptance feel more accessible.

For my friend, the journey is just beginning. And the most frightening thing may be that this particular descent has no clear bottom.

And yet—there was such a calm, clear tone in that conversation. A quiet steadiness.

It moved me deeply. It still does. Because in that steadiness, I heard something that felt like grace.

Peace.

And if there is anything I wish more for my friend then a cure it is peace.

Suffering finds us all, one time or another. In big ways, such as my friend. More often, or in small. All too often, the suffering, big and small, comes at our own hands.

Imagine this: you're driving down the road, minding your own business. Suddenly, a vehicle cuts in front of you, forcing you to slam on your brakes. You and your tires both scream. The car swerves. Your coffee spills.

Your amygdala instantly detects the threat and alerts your hypothalamus, which activates your sympathetic nervous system.

Within seconds, adrenaline floods your bloodstream, elevating your heart rate, raising your blood pressure, quickening your breath. Your pupils dilate. Digestion slows. Muscles tense. Your body is preparing to fight, flee, or freeze.

Cortisol follows shortly after, helping sustain the stress response. It sharpens focus and floods your system with glucose, making sure you have the energy to respond if the threat continues.

Eventually, you realize the threat has passed. You are no longer in imminent danger. Your brain and body begin to settle. Heart rate slows. Breathing steadies. Hormone levels shift.

Ahead of you, the offending vehicle disappears around a bend, exits off the freeway, or blends into traffic.

I’s over.

But your mind hasn’t gotten the message yet.

As your prefrontal cortex starts to regain control from the amygdala, you begin to process what just happened.

A thought fills your mind: I could have been killed.

The story grows, spiraling out of control.

What an idiot.

Was he on drugs?

What if I’d swerved into the car next to me, with the children in the back? I could have killed them!

This internal reaction, the story we tell ourselves about the event, is what turns momentary pain into prolonged suffering.

There is a Buddhist concept called The Second Arrow that resonates with me deeply.

As the Buddha taught 2,600 years ago, pain is an inevitable part of life. That’s the first arrow—an illness, a loss, a difficult truth. But then we often add a second arrow: our reaction. The fear, blame, shame, or resistance we layer on top of the pain.

We can plan, prepare, build all kinds of protections into our lives—but we can’t avoid every arrow shot at us from the outside.

Life happens. It did for me twelve years ago. It did for my friend just recently.

The first arrow is unavoidable. You may never even see it coming. Like that car that cut you off on the highway.

The second arrow is your reaction—the suffering you create in your own mind.

It’s easy to say it wasn’t you. It was them. But that other driver is long gone. The only person left in the car is you. And you’re the one choosing to spiral into a mental tirade.

The solution is simple in theory, harder in practice.

You get cut off. Slam on the brakes. Tires squeal. The car swerves.

Fear flashes. Your amygdala screams. Brain chemistry changes. Heart rate spikes.

Then, it’s over. You get the car back under control. You assess the situation. No impact. No injuries. The immediate threat is gone. Your breathing begins to calm.

And that’s when the story starts.

But this time, you see it for what it is: the second arrow.

You take a breath and say to yourself, “I’m okay.”

And every time that reel starts to play in your mind again—and it will—you remind yourself again: “I’m okay. Everything is fine.”

It isn’t easy. It takes conscious effort. A desire not to react. A willingness to accept what happened and let it go.

It takes practice. And it takes awareness.

Because you can only stop the second arrow if you see yourself loading the bow.

Now, imagine something far worse than a careless driver cutting you off, such as an alarming medical diagnosis.

The first arrow sinks far deeper, and the pain lingers longer.

The stakes rise, the fear is multiplied, and avoiding the second arrow becomes more important.

True acceptance is critical if you want any hope of peace.

Perhaps the hardest part of acceptance is the awareness it takes to get there. You must look directly into the thing that scares you the most. And see it for what it is, the unavoidable first arrow. Recognize that it has already struck and that cannot be undone. It should be easy. It is a fact.

The car nearly ran you off the road.

The doctor’s diagnosis is clear.

”Facts already in evidence,” a TV lawyer might say.

There is no use arguing the facts. And once you can accept that, the only decision left is whether you want to sit in the saddness and despair you feel or do you want to begin again.

Because we can always choose to begin again.

For me, awareness is something I cultivate through meditation—watching how my mind works, learning to actually see it when it starts to spin out of control.

I practice every day. I sit quietly, observing what arises. Sometimes it’s just my breath. Other times, it’s an itch on my face or a pain in my lower back. Often, it’s a thought.

As I’ve learned to label those thoughts—fear, delusion, craving—I’m teaching myself to recognize and understand the mental formations that drift through consciousness, often uninvited.

However you choose to do it, the first key to acceptance is awareness.

Because you can’t change what you don’t notice.

And that, I think, is where the real work begins.

Because once you’ve seen clearly—once you’ve felt the weight of the truth and stopped firing arrows at yourself—what’s left?

You begin again.

Not because you’ve been healed, or fixed, or freed from pain. But because you’ve stopped fighting reality long enough to take a step forward. Not away from the truth—but with it.

Beginning again is not dramatic. It’s not the stuff of movies. It’s the first deep breath after a hard cry. It’s getting out of bed when you don’t know what the day will hold. It’s making a cup of coffee. Answering a text. Taking a walk.

It’s ordinary. And quietly brave.

Acceptance makes that possible. Awareness opens the door. And making a conscious choice to begin again is how we walk through it.

First and foremost in my heart is the wish for a cure for my friend.

But whether or not that ever materializes, I wish for him the strength and acceptance it takes to face what lies ahead—and the peace to find a new beginning, for as long as the journey lasts.