Image by mohamed_hassan from Pixabay
Let’s face it, life isn’t easy, not in the slightest. If you think I have it easier than you then you would more than likely be wrong. Unless you’re Royalty, or born into indentured slavery where you spend most of your life digging in a ditch for cobalt, then the life that you lead is more than likely similar to mine in terms of struggle.
Sure, I may live in a richer country, or a better part of the country, or even a nicer part of the town. My car may be flashier, or I may live in a bigger house, or hell I may even have a better job, the only difference between you and I is that perhaps my struggle was different to yours, and it involved separate choices. And luck, but luck is a mindset in my mind.
Luck is created by seeing opportunity when there is none. A positive thinker can see a future movie star in a downtrodden and down on his success man, whereas a negative thinker will only see the man and avoid him because he probably hasn’t bathed in a while. I’m not saying this is every time, but it’s how these people get spotted — because others see things most people cannot. That’s how luck is created.
The biggest lie you were sold when young (mostly you sell this to yourself) is that the world is fair and just, and there’s always someone to look out for you. People should treat others with respect, and if you just “do the right thing” then life will treat you well.
This was my struggle in my youth, and caused quite a bit of anger in my adulthood. The conflict between my idealism that the world was fair and just, and the reality that was a lot more brutal than this, and at times I wish the world could have swallowed me whole. I do think this isn’t an isolated instance though, I honestly think many many people come into this conflict between idealism and reality at some stage in their life. Some sooner than others.
I was one of these people that tried to cling onto the fair and just, the good triumphing over evil, the mighty bright force against the evil dark force. My idealism led the way for me during quite a bit of my adulthood, always seeing the world in black or white, never anything that existed in between. Something was either good or bad, nothing ever lived on the outside.
This was my struggle. Situations would happen to me and I would always try and take the morally just path, not realising that sometimes there is only the best decisions for you to take, and none of them are good or will wield any rewards as a consequence. Sometimes a chosen path would end up in many dark lonely nights, and I would crucify myself, hurting that I had chosen wrongly, and only if I had done something different my life would be much better.
This is what we call the grass is always greener effect. That other people’s circumstances are better than ours, or that if we change past decisions made then we would be on a much better plane of existence. But that’s a massive lie. A HUGE one. Everyone struggles in some form. Working for about 15 years in Mental Health taught me this.
There’s always deeper meaning behind other people’s circumstances, and mostly that deeper meaning you more than likely would not want to experience it yourself.
The boy that’s cool in school, that everyone wants to be like, and acts as if he could not give a fuck about anything may be because he’s being neglected at home, and where you or I would be taken by the scruff of our necks, he’s left to play outside until 5am doing what he wants and as he pleases.
The girl studying really hard to achieve top grades in University may seem that life comes easy to her but in reality she’s burying her head in books to distract herself from the fact that whenever she goes home her stepdad is abusing her and her sisters. She wants to get away. Far away.
The boy flashing his money around like it’s water and buying everyone in the bar a drink does so because he’s never really had genuine connection in his life. His mum and dad are too busy jetting around the world for business and he learned very early on that money gets him attention, but in doing so it’s been at the sacrifice of genuine love, connection and community.
There is no easy path to life. Everyone struggles in their own ways. What may seem irrelevant to you could be like a plane crash to another person, and it only feels irrelevant to you because you haven’t been in that position before. However small a struggle may appear – the mind can be like Alcatraz, and for some people there’s just no escaping it.
That doesn’t mean you have to give up though. We were born this way. If life was designed it sure wasn’t designed to be easy. One thing I’ve realised in life is that to get anywhere, or to make any type of forward motion in life is that you have to struggle first and overcome it. It requires quite a bit of stoicism. I like the saying,
“For a solution to arise, conflict must first appear.”
It’s true you know. If you look at the history of humanity, 99.99% of it is brutally violent and conflict heavy. The fact that a lot of us can exist together now in large cities in relative harmony is a phenomenal achievement for humanity.
posted from my blog, here: https://learnisart.com/you-were-born-to-struggle/
