A good life comes from choosing to do the hard thing.
I’m more and more convinced that everyone suffers an equal amount. It seems some people suffer less than others, but everyone suffers in different ways.
What matters is how you choose to suffer.
I practice a lot of discipline to stay fit. 60 miles a week on bike, 15 minutes of yoga twice a day, pullups for upper body strength. My wife once teased me that I eat like a Buddhist monk — lots of fruit, veggies, brown rice.
Sitting on the couch eating junk food seems easy. Until one day you can’t get up, back pain, bad knees, out of breath.
You’re going to suffer either way. But you get to choose.
If you have a lot of close friends, and live a long healthy life, you’re going to wind up going to a lot of funerals. But most people would prefer that to the alternative of loneliness.
Some people seem to have an easy life. Mom and Dad still married, grandparents and the family dog still healthy, popular in high school, got into their top college on the first try. But these people, bless their hearts, have extreme limitations in subtle ways. They can’t relate to real suffering, and when something truly rough finally happens to them, they collapse.
I’m convinced that ‘easy’ is always wrong. A good life comes from choosing to do the hard thing.
Not everything hard is good, but everything good is hard.
Do it the hard way.
