Life is difficult. We can accept that or get aggravated, but we cannot change it. The mistake we make, with varying degrees of awareness, is that we believe life should be easy, and that we would be happier if it were.
- We torture ourselves when we conflate easy with good and difficult with bad.
- This false belief leads to a clash of the titans between reality and our illusions.
The problem isn’t that life is difficult. It’s supposed to be difficult. The problem is that we expect it to be easy or we try to make it easy.
- Life proposes a series of challenges, dilemmas, problems, dissatisfactions, heartaches, and opportunities. How we respond to these events determines the direction and quality of our lives.
- But we have become so expert at problem-solving, that we think that life itself is a problem to solve.
- But the “life-is-difficult problem” is insolvable because it isn’t a problem.
- We set out to avoid all difficulty and friction. This is impossible so we become agitated and angry.
- We shun anything that will bring us stress.
- Pain is unacceptable in this paradigm, so each time we encounter it, we try to numb it.
All our efforts to avoid the difficulties in life lead us away from everything that is deeply satisfying. If your goal was an easy life, would any of this of the following be possible?
- Meaningful relationships, deeply satisfying work, health and vitality, raising children, starting a business, or mastery of a professional hobby?
Re-source – Response
a reaction to something; a reaction to a specific stimulus or situation
What are you avoiding that you should be confronting? This quest for an easy life leads us into the abyss of comfort.
- We begin to see comfort as the antidote for anything that is difficult. But soon the comfort turns into pain. I know it’s a paradox, but it’s real.
- It may not be physical pain, but emotional pain and spiritual angst.
- We are not made for an easy life, so with each attempt at an easy life we inflict acute emotional suffering upon ourselves.
We now find ourselves at a junction. We can return to reality and face head-on the difficulties of life, or we can allow reality to continue to crash against our illusion of an easy life.
- Many choose their illusions, but they end up suffering more for their avoidance than they would have suffered if they have simply embraced the difficulties of life.
- Having abandoned the path that leads to everything deeply satisfying, they become miserably disconnected, and spend their lives complaining about everything and everyone.
- Only a fool makes an easy life his ultimate goal.
When human beings are at their best, they face the difficulties of life head-on.
- They learn to delay gratification, embrace reality, release illusions, accept responsibility for their lives, and live the wisdom that the most satisfying experiences are often difficult.
craving and resource from “Life is Messy” by Mathew Kelly
