It won’t be easy, but why did you think it would be?
There is nothing easy about life, nothing easy about living out your dreams. Life requires you to be in a most tenacious pursuit, it calls for unwavering commitment, and a pinch of joy. Yes, joy, because without it, it is terribly difficult to face the daily chores and temporary storms that swing through.
It won’t be easy, but it will be worthwhile. It won’t be easy, but it will be memorable. It won’t be easy, but that doesn’t mean that you were not made for this or that you won’t have a great story to tell when everything is said and done.
It won’t be easy, but then again, life is perfect just the way it is.
You are imperfectly perfect. A human being. An island onto yourself. No one to compare with. No life to mirror. Everything is as it is because that is how it is. It’s not terribly comforting. I think we would prefer to believe that our success or mission in life was somehow preordained, that our lives were predetermined. That somewhere, someone knows and understands what we will accomplish. But that’s just it. I keep coming back to this reality over and over again. We are human beings and not human doings. Failure and success is not as important as the spirit with which something is built.
A person who fails in a relationship is not a failure. The relationship is the failure. The people involved are imperfectly perfectly flawed. That doesn’t mean you don’t need to change, or that you can’t approach differently and learn from your mistakes. You do need to change. You need to grow and become someone that you have never been, but failures do not define us.
Mistakes do not need to be carried, nor do they need to become our undiscussed burden. They should rest dead, where they emerged. They should rest in peace when we first noticed them. Don’t take them with you. Leave them where you found them, and continue forward to the best of your ability, with the best that you’ve got.
No. It won’t be easy and none of the technological advances that propose to make life better and easier, are not going to help much either. All the progress and innovation that surrounds us are just tools. They are hammers and pliers in a toolbox. Useless on their own, fun to hold perhaps, but meaningless if not used for the right purpose.
Don’t worry about easy. Don’t worry about hard. Worry about what your heart is telling you. Worry about how you can make the world a better place. Not the whole world, that is impossible, worry about your world. Worry about the people in your life that could use your smile, your touch, and your time?
Don’t ever worry about easy. Worry only about your regret. Regret of things you didn’t do or were afraid to try and regret of not having those memories of things you didn’t live. Memories you won’t have because you chose easy. People you don’t know, because it was too hard. Lives you haven’t influenced or been blessed by, because it was hard, and so you just sat there, complaining how easy it is for everyone else, how they are special, how they have talent, hoping that you were somehow different or someone else, when all you have to do is just be yourself.
Let go. Gaze upwards and forward. Stop wondering why life is hard.
Cover photo generously provided by photographer Stephanie Lorena via unsplash.com
