Life is difficult

I'm reading The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck and it is seriously changing my life.  I rave about it to myself or anyone who will listen every chance I get. This is the first page of the book:

"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.

Most do not fully see this truth, that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race, or even their species, and not upon others. I know about this moaning because I have done my share.

Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them? Do we want to teach our children to solve them?

What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one. Problems, depending upon their nature, evoke in us frustration of grief or sadness or loneliness or guilt or regret or anger or fear or anxiety or anguish or despair. These are uncomfortable feelings, often very uncomfortable, often as painful as any kind of physical pain, sometimes equaling the very worst kind of physical pain. Indeed, it is because of the pain that events or conflicts engender in us all that we can call them problems. And since life poses an endless series of problems, life is always difficult and is full of pain as well as joy.

Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. When we desire to encourage the growth of the human spirit, we challenge and encourage the human capacity to solve problems, just as in school we deliberately set problems for our children to solve. It is through the pain of confronting and resolving that we learn. As Benjamin Franklin said, "Those things that hurt, instruct." It is for this reason that wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems."

And then later he writes:

"Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live." 

Those ideas combined with this post that starts like this have really shifted something in my head for me:

“When I was thirty five, I looked up one day and realized that I hadn’t had a life. … I had a hint of what I’d been missing. Laundry. And not just laundry, but what laundry gives us: an honest encounter with ourselves before we’re freshened and fluffed and sanitized. Before we have ourselves put together again.” – Karen Maezen Miller

When I quit my job to work at home, I was perplexed by the chores that swelled up to fill my every waking moment. “I can be on my feet every second, never stopping, and still the house is a disaster,” another mom lamented to me. I nodded. My boys are gifted at making messes. Recently, when I left the room for thirty seconds, they managed to cover every inch of the living room with a couple of board games — tiny tokens and piles of cards and fake money strewn everywhere. When I first started at this mothering thing, it was tempting to dream about hiring a housekeeper or paring down our wardrobes to two pairs each or replacing all of the dishes with disposables. But soon I realized that the chores were like any other problem. What they needed was my attention.

My feelings about the daily chores have transformed remarkably over the years. They’re messy and monotonous and always there like a gnat buzzing around your head. But as Karen Maezen Miller so beautifully points out in Hand Wash Cold, they are life. And they are incredible life coaches. It would be silly to trek across the world in search of the meaning of it all or to hire an expensive life coach when we can likely find all of the answers we need right here in the dishes and laundry."

It's like a switch has been flipped in my mind. I've always known I had a problem with procrastination, but I just kind of chalked it up as "me", not really a flaw, just how I was. I remember being little and avoiding cleaning my room at all costs, or being in college and thinking, "Well, it'll sure be great to get out of school where it won't matter as much that I'm a procrastinator!" Makes me laugh, but seriously I really did think that! And it's carried over into my adult life - I would rather read and write than do the dishes, nothing wrong with that, just how I was wired, we each have our strengths and weaknesses, right? But to hear it put like that,

"Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live."

It just made so much sense. This is a skill I can choose to learn and if I choose to learn it it will make my life so much better? Of course! Geez, what have I been doing all these years?

And so I've started to look around my house and ask myself, "What of these top three chores that need to be done do I least want to do?" And then I march myself over and purposely start that one first.

It's changed how I talk to the girls too. I have started bringing it up in conversation whenever I can, and speaking of it like that, like it is a skill that we can choose to practice and get better at and being really matter of fact about it, "Sophia, do you know what skill will most decide how good of a life you'll have? Of aaaaaaaallllll the things the skills out there that make life good do you know what will help you the most to like your life? It's how well you learn to choose the hardest thing first. Every time something hard comes in front of you you have two choices: face it or distract yourself from it. If you learn how to face the hard things instead of ignore them or run away from them, then you'll feel soooooo much better because your problems will get solved! It's that awesome! Solving problems instead of them always being there, weighing you down like rocks in your backpack!?" I ask them what is hard for them to face right now? What problems at school or home or in their heart or with friends do they try to avoid? It is one of my favorite conversations lately, listening to their perspectives on their life in this way.

But I'm not saying I think talking about it with them is the key to helping them learn it, 'cause I really do believe this too:

“All I am saying ... can be summed up in two words: Trust Children. Nothing could be more simple, or more difficult. Difficult because to trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves, and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.” ~ John Holt

When I'm reading these simple lines like, "Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them?" I feel like a little kid in a classroom on the edge of my seat waving my hand in the air like, "Pick me, pick me M. Scott Peck, I want to solve them! Yes! Solve. Them. I'm ready for the decent way to live, thank you so much for asking!" Trusting myself to be able to learn even the things I'd really rather never think about.

Have I mentioned I really like this book? The number one rated review on Amazon for it cracked me up!

445 of 468 people found the following review helpful

Good Book

By A Customer on November 11, 2000

"I am a therapist. The two books I recommend to my clients that seem to produced lasting results are The Road Less Traveled and An Encouter With A Prophet. I also recommend both books to all of my friends and relatives."

It's just so true.