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The default state of life is that it’s hard. Your goal should be to get stronger every day to deal with it.
People want things to be easy. But there’s no way to make it so. Life is hard. In our materialistic society, we assume that wealthy people have it easy. So, we envy the rich and chase after what they have. But money doesn’t make life easy, nor does it necessarily make you happy. The link between money and happiness has been studied by many scientists, and the conclusion is all the same. As soon as you have enough money to take care of the basics, more money does little to fulfill you.
There’s another problem. The things we own, own us. Maintaining what we have, and accumulating more, takes time and energy. Time is finite and when it's gone, it's gone. The more time and energy we spend the harder life becomes.
“The things you own end up owning you." - Tyler Durden
Chasing an easy life makes our lives harder, faster.
Don’t think about life being hard or easy. Life just is. We can choose our challenges, but we’ll always have them. I say take life one day at a time. Focus only on being stronger today than you were yesterday.
I remember when I was young and thought if I was an adult life would be easy. When I was a kid, I was always thinking about things out of my reach. Like making my own decisions, driving a car, or having a career. I had a lot of authority figures to answer to, like my parents and teachers, and that frustrated me. I believed if I was an adult, I wouldn’t have anyone telling me what to do and that my life would be easy.
Now that I’ve been an adult for many years, I don’t believe that anymore. Life didn’t get easier, it got more complicated. Fortunately, I’m stronger than I was when I was a child.
Bruce Lee captured my sentiment in this blog post’s quote. You need to stop wishing for an easy life because life isn’t ever easy.
Life is hard regardless of your circumstance. Chasing the easy life only makes it harder. Instead of wishing for an easy life decide to get stronger every day to deal with life’s challenges.
We’re living in an era defined by populist outrage. Over ten years ago the world’s frustration with the rich and powerful came to a boiling point with the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Great Recession hit people hard, and people were understandably angry and frustrated.
It's natural to be angry about an unfair advantage. Power and wealth are concentrated in very few hands these days. But people must have the self-awareness to know if their anger is based on an unrealistic view of life.
Some people are perpetually angry at those with more than them. They think their own life is hard because they don’t have enough. When they see someone with the things they don’t have, they assume that their life is easy. This belief is common, so the rich are easy targets for outrage.
Let me bring this point to Hive. When you’re new on Hive and struggling to grow your account. It’s easy to be envious of the big rewards some posts get. The issue here is discounting people’s time and effort. Not everyone’s success is based on luck. It’s rather insulting to be told you’re lucky when you put thousands of hours of effort into building something.
All we can do in this life is trade one set of problems for another. If you’ve been working your entire life and are unhappy with your lifestyle, you need to figure out what problems you’re choosing to live with, and what new ones you must take on. Maybe you need to trade some problems to advance in your career. If you work on the front lines you might need to learn how to delegate tasks and trust others to complete them.
The important thing to remember is that life is always going to be challenging.
It’s even a challenge to not have challenges. Think about how many people say they’re bored. Not having enough important things to occupy your time is its own social problem. It leads to depression and a lack of purpose.
Power and resources flow towards responsibility. Immature people think they can make their life easy by avoiding responsibility. This is rarely the case though. When you avoid responsibility, you end up giving power over your circumstances to someone else. Sooner or later, you’re going to feel resentment.
If I was going to adjust Bruce Lee’s quote, it's this. Pray for the strength to take on more responsibility. Responsibility is the only way to have more control over your life. But life will never be without its problems.
Accept life as it is and don't wish for it to be easy. Take things one day at a time and work on being stronger today than you were yesterday.
