My New Best Friend

"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."

-The Road Less Travelled, M. Scott Peck

Before I read this quote (and the whole book with it), I started arriving at the conclusion that life was painful.  But when I'd say it out loud, I think people either thought I was being dramatic or pessimistic.  And as I delved into the idea even deeper, I realized the problem wasn't in my statement, but in the reaction.

Somehow, someone at some point told everyone that life was about being happy.  Consequently, people started determining the health and success of their lives by the frequency and severity of their problems.  And by following that logic, the only way to a happy life was to avoid and prevent as many problems as possible.  Now you might be saying "ok, yeah, and what's wrong with that, Selbouez?"  To which I would reply, "you're an idiot."  

Life is difficult.  Life is painful.  Life involves much suffering.  And the minute we started believing that those truths were unnatural, was the minute we stopped growing.  We've spent so much time trying to avoid pain that we've never let pain shape us.  So much time trying to escape difficulty, that we never let difficulty teach us.  And so much time minimizing suffering, that we never let suffering strengthen us.  People think that growth happens when life is rainbows and butterflies.  But be honest with yourself: when has that ever happened?

Life is difficult because we live in a broken world.  We are inherently broken people.  It's not pessimism; it's reality.  But I'll tell you what else I've learned: the quicker we accept and admit that pain is inevitable, the quicker it doesn't even matter.  The best way I can describe what that's like is how I imagine the story of the three youth in the fiery furnace (Daniel Ch. 3).  There's a fire burning all around you, but you're not getting burned.  You might feel the heat and see the flames, but they can't touch you.  At least not destructively.  Pain becomes destructive when you don't deal with it correctly; or worse, when you pretend it isn't there.  

Let's be friends with pain.  It may be the most faithful friend you'll ever make.