04/10/2026
I had such a good laugh tonight at something my friend told me, and underneath the laughter I realised, this is such a simple example of how self-abandonment can show up in the most ordinary moments.
I asked my friend how his legs were, since we went bushwalking yesterday on a fairly rigorous track. He told me they were good because he’d had a massage this morning.
Apparently the lady was VERY strong. 🤣 He had told her his legs were the issue, so she worked on them hard. Really hard. He said he was in agony.
I asked, “So why didn’t you tell her to ease up a little?”
He said he just bore it. 🤣🤣🤣
I said, “I can only imagine the noises and grunting you were making.”
Then he told me he was actually trying really hard NOT to make any noise because it hurt so much. He could hear someone in the next room grunting in pain or discomfort too, so he tried his best to keep himself quiet. 🤣
I was drinking while listening to him narrate the whole experience, and I spat my drink out laughing. My brain couldn’t help itself. It had already created the picture of him lying there in agony, not saying anything about the pressure, then, to top it off, putting himself through another kind of agony trying to suppress the noises his body naturally wanted to make to ease the first discomfort. 🤣🤣🤣
Then came the best part.
Afterward, the owner asked him how the massage therapist was because she was new.
“How was the massage? She is new.”
He said, “Great.”
🤣🤣🤣
After recovering, and still in hysterics, I said, “Why didn’t you tell the truth? You could have simply said the pressure was a little too hard for you. That’s useful feedback.”
And somewhere underneath all the laughter, I could see something so clearly. This is self-abandonment in one of its simplest forms.
The body is saying, “This is too much.” Something inside knows exactly what it’s experiencing. Yet instead of expressing it, we HUmans override ourselves. We endure. We suppress. We stay quiet. And then, when someone actually asks us what our experience was, we might even say, “Great.” 🤣
Sometimes we do this because we don’t want to inconvenience another person. Yet look at what actually happened. In trying not to inconvenience someone else, he inconvenienced himself.
And the funny thing is, the other person may not have been inconvenienced at all. She probably would have simply adjusted the pressure if he’d spoken up.
How often do we do this in other areas of our lives? Our body says no, yet our mouth says yes. Something doesn’t feel right, yet we don’t say anything. We need something, yet we don’t want to be a bother. We make ourselves uncomfortable so somebody else doesn’t have to experience even the possibility of discomfort.
And just when I thought the story was finished, I showed him what I’d written. 🤣
He started explaining that perhaps he was actually better off for not saying anything and letting her work his legs that hard.
So I asked, “Are your calves okay now?”
“What? No! It feels like she’s still on them. She really nailed my calves.”
🤣🤣🤣
And my mind immediately went, Oh, I have to add that.
Because there was another little movement happening right there. The mind finding a way to explain why enduring something the body had clearly been saying was too much might actually have been better for him.
Funny HUmans we are. 🤣
Sometimes self-abandonment isn’t some huge dramatic event. Sometimes it’s simply lying on a massage table in agony, desperately trying not to make a sound, telling yourself afterward that perhaps it was better that way…
and when someone asks how the massage was,
“Great.”
🤣🤣🤣
🪷
(Gratitude to the original author)
