The magic you’re looking for is in the work you are avoiding - Joseph Campbell.

I have been thinking quite a bit about caves in narratives.

I recently rewatched ‘Dracula Untold’, a movie where the protagonist, Vladmir has to venture into a dark mountain and confront the Master Vampire to obtain power to protect his kingdom and family. I also think of the cave Luke Skywalker had to enter in ‘Empire Strikes Back’ to confront his dark self and emerge with new understanding. The caves of the video game, Elden Ring come to mind as well, the dark gauntlets that you as the player must enter into and fight through, until you defeat the boss and return stronger, with a new item, talisman, or weapon to boot.

Many times in life, we have to plunge into the depths, go into the scary places, to wrestle with our demons and fears, so that we can learn, grow, and return stronger.

These unknown depths are the caves we fear to tread, the work we refuse to do.

The doors to our breakthroughs, the paths to the fulfilment of our deepest desires lie in those areas, those tasks, in the work we don’t do, in the caves we refuse to enter.

We have to learn to embrace the difficulty of going into these dark places.

What are these caves?

They are the tasks that linger on our todo lists for years, the things we want to learn but never get around to, the areas of our lives that we know we should get fixed. They are the difficult conversations that need to be had, but which somehow always end up pushed to the side to preserve the peace. They are the important and crucial things we need to do that we avoid, choosing instead to do the more urgent or expedient things.

Why do we do this, how do we end up in this trap time and time again?

We fear what we will find

We do not enter the caves because we are scared of facing the truth. That maybe we are not good enough, that maybe we have messed up, that things are not working. Sometimes its easier to stick our heads in the sand and live in delusion, than really take a hard look at things and truly observe reality.

Sometimes we have let things fester so long, we fear to see what this thing has turned into, how far the cancer of our neglect has metastasised.

We fear our shame

One of the big reasons we do not enter the caves is because of our shame and embarrassment. We know we should have been practicing healthier habits, so we are embarrassed to go for a checkup. We know we should manage our finances better, so we avoid looking at our bank accounts or tracking our expenses. We know we should have been investing in our education, so we avoid looking up schools or applying for courses. We also fear looking bad in front of others, so we avoid our caves, bluster with our strengths and comfort zones, and act like everything is okay.

We fear the work it will take

Conquering our caves requires us to face our issues squarely and do the work to resolve them.

And that work can be intimidating. Facing the emotional struggle and friction in the first place, and then doing the actual work, to learn, to fix, to resolve. It is all hard work. But the good news is that as we tackle our caves, we get better, stronger and more capable and eventually, it becomes a cake walk.

We fear the time it will take

This ties into our fear of shame as well. We are embarrassed that we have waited so long and let things get so bad. We become afraid that fixing things will take even longer. But the time is going to pass anyway. Won’t we rather tackle the caves now and in time conquer them?

Now if these are some reasons why we do not do the things we know we ought to. How then can we counter these issues, face our fears and tackle our caves?

• With courage: There’s no two ways about it. Sometimes we just have to buck up, grit our teeth and get right into it. Into the muck and mess, and work our way through until we solve the issues. We have to trust in our capacity to rise up to the challenge of our situation.
• Embrace failure: Failure is part of the process. We are already in the red, things are already messed up. We have to embrace that things suck, that we have failed presently. But understanding that failure is part of the process, then we can learn what we don’t know and make adjustments until we start to win.
• Tackle one big cave at a time: If you have multiple caves to conquer, multiple issues to resolve, then don’t overwhelm yourself and try tackle all of them at once. Pick one major one issue and stick with it until it is resolved, and then move on to the next one.
• Commit and persist: In all of this, keep this mantra in mind - commit and persist. You have to commit to the task, to the process. You have to commit to doing the work, engaging with the cave, facing the truth, pushing past the fear and taking concrete action. It will be tough, it will be hard but if you persist, if you keep going, eventually you will succeed, you will emerge from the cave stronger and better for it.