Life Is Difficult

Most of my life I have wondered to myself, "Why do things always have to be so hard?" I often just wish that things would just work out the way that they should. Even when they seem to, I find I am uneasy, thinking that there must be an inevitable shoe about to drop and spoil things.

Someone recently pointed out to me that life is difficult. It is when we accept that fact that life actually becomes less difficult. He said this comes from the book "The Road Less Traveled." I have reflected on this idea and I think it is true. My lifelong angst derives from a struggle against expectations that things should not be so hard.

"Acceptance is the answer to all of my problems today," as it says in the Big Book. That is the key for me. It always has been. But where, I wonder, does the expectation that life should be easier come from?

I think it is a holdover from when we are children. Children are naturally sheltered by society and by those that nurture them from the harsh realities of life. The principal is that we want our children to "have a childhood" first, and then they meet the realities of the world, "when they are ready."

For me, and I suppose for many others as well, there is a holdover in my thinking, a child part of me that has always expected things to be the way they were when I was young. When things always worked out and everything was easy and nothing bad happened no matter how irresponsible or careless I was. I want the world to be like that, the way it was once for me, when I was a child.

I expect things to always work out, to be easy, probably because a part of me remembers that once, they did.

So, it ultimately is about growing up, about seeing the world as it truly is, and learning to function in it as a mature adult. Life is difficult. But knowing that life is difficult makes life less difficult. A paradox, but often, the greatest truths are paradoxes.