Life is difficult.
This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth we transcend it.Once we truly know that life is difficult —once we truly understand and accept it — then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.
Most people do not fully see this truth that life is difficult.nstead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their
difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not
be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else
upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their
race, or even their species, and not upon others. I know about this moaning because I have done
my share.
Life is a series of problems. Do we want to
moan about them or solve them? Do we want to teach our children to
solve them?
Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life's
problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline
we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve
all problems.
What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting
and solving problems is a painful one. Problems, depending upon their
nature, evoke in us frustration of grief, sadness, loneliness,
guilt, regret, anger, fear, anxiety, anguish, or despair.These are
uncomfortable feelings, often very uncomfortable, often as painful
as any kind of physical pain, sometimes equaling the very worst
kind of physical painIndeed, it is because of
the pain that events or conflicts engender in us all that we can
call them problems.And since life poses an endless series
of problems, life is always difficult and is full of pain as well
as joy Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that
distinguishes between success and failure.It is only
because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. When we
desire to encourage the growth of the human spirit, we challenge
and encourage the human capacity to solve problems, just as in
school we deliberately set problems for our children to solve.It is through the pain of
confronting and resolving that we learn. As Benjamin Franklin said,
"Those things that hurt, instruct."It is for this reason that wise
people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems.
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