Don’t confuse a good life with an easy one. I don’t know about you, but often I catch myself seeking the easy path; the path of least resistance. In the box, you feel like easing off the pace or lessening the load. At work, you find yourself going through the motions instead of doing the emotional labour. In your relationship you take the quick, emotional response instead of breathing and choosing the right one. The lie we tell ourselves is that we want a life free from problems or challenge. But really, you don’t. You shouldn’t wish for an easy life, you should wish for the strength required to beat the problem you face. There’s many reasons here, but the central one is that you are in control over your reaction, but never the external environment. As Jerzy Gregorek has said “Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.” What’s more, do you really want a life without challenge? It strikes me that a life without endeavour is a life without meaning; a voyage without adventure. Difficulty creates meaning, but only if you choose to see life as an adventure set out before you. Dostoevsky wrote about humankind: “Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and he will destroy it all just so he has something to do.”
A life with no difficulty is a boring one. What makes you human is the ability to solve complex problems. Take up the largest burden you can bear, and bear it.
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