Chapter 286

“Don’t wish things were easier. Wish you were better.”

Not sure where I read this, but I think it has a great deal of value as a concept. We spend far too much of our time wishing wanting desiring easier. In fact some of my acquaintances are driven by simply the idea and hope for things to be easier. Let’s admit it, ease and comfort are two big driving factors in our Western culture. Combine that with the third big culture driver - avoid suffering at all costs - and then you have the Western make-a-wish foundational piece of wanting life to be easier.

But difficulties and resistance and constraints and effort and challenging situations are what make us better and stronger and smarter and wiser. So the moral of this story at the very least is that you and I need to be better, rather than things to be easier. When you think of it like this, things being easier is just like cheating. You are cheating yourself out of all kinds of blessings - that look and feel like difficulties. You are cheating yourself out of all kinds of wisdom and strength. You can’t get stronger and wiser when everything is effortless. I am heading to the gym here when I finish writing this chapter, and I am gonna load it up! I am going to load that bar with all the weight I can move, all I can handle, because that is the only way to get stronger!

Or you can go all philosophical here, and just look back on your life. If yours has followed a trajectory like mine, then all the key moments, all the key decisions, all the key directional changes and orientation changes in my life happen at the most difficult moments. None of the easy parts moved me in the great directions I needed in life.