Expect Life to be Hard and it gets Easier

The easiest way of making life easier is to redefine what we presently think is hard.

If we think something is hard we won’t enjoy that thing, unless we see the purpose or benefit in doing or enduring the hard thing.

If we expect life to be easy, we’re soon disappointed. Expecting life to be easy is the commonest insanity. But, where we anticipate life to be tough, life is suddenly made much easier because our expectations are right-sized to reality. For life is easy for nobody.

Yet reality is an authentic friend to all
who ply courage and humility; who love truth.

Life is tough, always has been, always will be. But when we accept life is tough, it gets easier.

Surely a purpose of life is to endure hardship better so we’re able to experience more joy. The opportunity we all have is to recalibrate how we perceive difficulty. The more prepared we are for a range of difficulty, the more resilient we will in fact be.

Recalibrating our perception of difficulty has got to be about faith, even for the irreligious.

Faith has this direct benefit. It trusts that enduring hardship makes us stronger, more resilient, mature persons. There’s a payoff for our sacrifice of endurance. When we believe something good compensates us for enduring something hard, our actual experience of life is made easier, because we see the purpose.

We can do anything if we see the purpose and agree it’s worthwhile. And in faith there is purpose in enduring misfortune well… to struggle well.

That’s faith. It trusts that enduring adversity is good, for it knows that there’s no other sane option. And when faith is vindicated, we redeem what goodness and growth would not be ours otherwise.

When immersed in the sea of difficulty we either sink or swim. Because there’s no point in sinking we choose to swim.