The Only Way Out Is Through

What it means to accept your situation and move forward

I saw a shirt yesterday that read “The Only Way Out Is Through”. This got me thinking about what I was going through myself, and how I could discover a new way to live even if I can’t fix the situation at hand.

But what does this mean — “The Only Way Out Is Through?” What does a philosophical statement like this mean, especially when we dispense it so casually on the front of a shirt as some sort of universal advice.

On the surface it appears to be like any other platitude. It feels good to read it, reassuring that part of ourselves that gets motivated by such broad, sweeping statements. Yes — We think — we can’t look back and dwell in the past, and the only change we can make is in the future.

Move forward at all costs.

Yet I can’t help thinking like Jackson browne that “sometimes it would be easier to change the past.” If I was lost on a trail, I’d probably backtrack to see where I went wrong, looking for the right path that I missed somewhere along the way.

Doesn’t backtracking on a hike sound like an appropriate metaphor? Yet it doesn’t ring true with time, because on the trail of life we can never go back and change anything (except in our own minds). We are told to “not look back” and “to focus on the future” when our minds are stuck in the past.

Yet I resist this. Maybe I am a rebel at heart, saying “I don’t want to get over it” when someone tells me to just move on. Maybe I’m the worst kind of fool, romanticizing the past instead of getting excited about the future.

After all, Montaigne said “Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.”

“The Only Way Out Is Through” doesn’t tell us to resist, but to follow our path where it leads. This is akin to going with the flow instead of fighting it, letting life lead us instead of obsessing over the past.

For me, this means following my feelings wherever they lead. It is not being controlled by them, but processing the feelings as they come and go. It’s not about being impulsive but self-aware, able to feel and understand what’s inside while finding a balance between expression and control.

Related posts:

This is a story of my first online business. It’s written to demonstrate how someone whose new to product fabrication or ecommerce can get started cheaply and easily! I wrote it a few years ago so if…

In the process of being a musician…and then cab driver…and then advertising agency owner who sold ads to a regiment of mostly brain dead hookers, I’ve known some pretty stupid people in my life. But…

Psoriasis is a chronic, inflammatory, multisystem disease which affects up to 3.2% of the U.S population. Topical steroids, which provide high efficacy and good safety, play a key role in the…