We spend a lot of time moaning and groaning about life being difficult, and I'll admit there is no doubt that most of us are facing constant challenges and struggles.
If you go through social media posts that tell personal stories, the negative typically outweighs the positive.
It made me think about the simple question of — in the course of a given day or a given week or a given month — just how often we encounter something that turns out to be easier than expected rather than more difficult than expected?
My personal experience tends to be that most things that appear simple end up having hidden facets that weren't in the instructions, as it were.
I remember a saying from way back when, relating mostly to retail sales, that "the large print giveth and the small print taketh away."
But when you apply that to life in general, I think many of us operate in an ocean of deception if you consider it from the meta level.
Think about it. How many things and offers would actually be attractive to people — and how many things would people actually want to buy — if the purveyors or sellers of aforesaid things were completely honest and up front about how much effort and difficulty were involved in their gig?
Considering that, is it any wonder that we more often than not end up with things that are more difficult than expected, rather than easier than expected?
As a result, I found myself trying to go through a somewhat objective review of just when was the last time I undertook something that turned out to be far easier than I had expected. And it turned out that it had been a surprisingly long time.
At first, I thought it might have happened within a couple of weeks when I went to get a property tax abatement at the local courthouse. On the surface the process actually was remarkably simple, but a couple of days later I got a phone call that I needed to bring in additional paperwork, which I then did, and then a couple of days after that I got another phone call that they needed the same additional paperwork covering different dates so I needed to make another trip to the courthouse.
And what made it more difficult than expected was the fact that I couldn't just e-mail scanned copies of the documents... they had to see the physical documents in person to ascertain that they were original as issued, and then make their own copies from that.
In the end, more difficult than expected.
Meanwhile, I am still trying to remember the last time something was easier than expected.
Feel free to leave a comment — this IS "social" media, after all!
As always, a 10% 
