"The only way out is through"- what does this mean to you?

You can’t avoid what is coming. The only way to escape it is to endure it, and get it over with.
Kind of like taxes.

Hang on, it’s going to be a rough ride!

I relate it to grief or getting over a trauma. You have to experience your loss in all kinds of ways for as long as need be and even then, you have not moved on, you have reintegrated.

A baby about to be born.

” . . . the door. No, the door, I said—why do you keep trying that window? You can’t reach it. And anyway, if you could, you still wouldn’t fit. Are you seeing how small it is? The only way out is through the door. . .

”Seriously it’s like you’re not even listening to me. Yeah, go ahead, keep jumping . . . because that’ll work.

“Hey where did you find that ladder? . . .

“But still, you can’t—

“It’s not like you’ll—

”Oh.”

I think of General Patton telling US soldiers, “the shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo”.

That when you’re immersed in a horrible situation, the only way out is to keep going until you get to the other side.

You’re faced with something totally unknown or unpleasant that you cannot avoid.
You can’t turn around, and you can’t go around…you just have to forge ahead, whatever comes.

It is also used as a mantra for feeling your feelings, no way around them, pain, grief, whatever…the only way out is through. I heard this phrase in some self help book years ago. haha You can’t heal what you don’t feel.

It means there is no avoiding whatever.

Out of what?

It is an abbreviated version of the Bene Gesserit saying:

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Something that has served me well to date.

There is a Fifteen song with the variation of “The only way around your problems is straight through them.”

Which I always took as confront things. If you don’t do the work to solve your issues they will always linger.