Life lessons
Chapter 2: Life is hard…and not always fair
“Life is inherently formed from a series of difficulties.
Are you just sitting here whining or boldly looking for solutions
to overcome those difficulties?” – M. Scott Peck
Happiness doesn’t happen by accident
Life doesn’t always turn out the way we expect.
There are realities that we must overcome
in order to learn our lessons,
even if it may be late.
One of those lessons is that happiness doesn’t happen by accident.
It’s an obvious fact whether we like it or not.
So we just sit there and complain about things that are against our will,
forever dreaming that life will go as we want,
or accept life as it is and understand that happiness is our own create?
Life is tough…
About 2,500 years ago,
the Buddha gave a very profound
and true teaching of the Four Noble Truths Sutra.
The first thing:
“Life is an ocean of suffering”.
You might think he was the first to say it,
but I think many people realized it
before the Buddha mentioned it
because it is hard to believe that
the lives of the first inhabitants of the earth were not.
it’s a bit difficult.
The nature of life is harsh,
it has always been and will always be.
When we understand and accept that,
we will feel lighter when facing unexpected difficulties and disadvantages.
One of the differences between successful people
and unsuccessful people is their different receptiveness to life’s difficulties.
Unsuccessful people avoid or tolerate obstacles,
while successful people seek solutions,
even when they have to endure hardships
because they believe they can overcome them.
A lot of people whine about their difficulties
as if their own situation is unique,
and they always feel that other people’s lives are easier than theirs.
In their mind,
it seems that complaining will take their obstacles out on others,
and that also shows that they have not yet accepted difficulties
as an inherent part of life.
In fact, that whining only makes them weaker and want to avoid reality.
As soon as we accept the truth:
Life is harsh,
we also begin to understand that,
when every obstacle comes,
there is also an opportunity coming.
Instead of letting difficulties defeat us,
let’s accept them as an opportunity to practice our own bravery.
Modern technology places us in a “push button” lifestyle – cooking,
washing dishes,
watching our favorite TV shows,
even exercising at the touch of a button.
In addition,
every day we are exposed to a series of advertisements that say ”
It won’t take long to get the body you want”,
“In a short time,
you can learn fluent in a foreign language”,
“Soon you will become a famous and rich person”…
Advertising and marketing professionals have been
and will continue to use such forms of presentation
because they understand human nature so well.
They know that most of us don’t accept difficult realities,
always seek to avoid
or want to solve problems quickly and easily.
But actually everything has its price,
there must be an investment of time,
effort, sometimes sacrifice and acceptance of losses.
And life isn’t always fair!
In 1981,
out of his own experiences,
Harold Kushner wrote
When Bad Things Happen to Good People,
for those who have been hurt by life,
that if life were fair,
they should be to get back some of what they gave.
It was one of the most widely read books of the 1980s.
It is a classic
because it is tied to one of the most common questions of all time,
“Why is this happening to me?”.
Kushner has a son named Aaron,
their family should be able to live happily and happily together.
But when Aaron was 3 years old,
doctors diagnosed him with “progeria”,
a disease that spreads very quickly and has no cure.
The boy suffered physical pain for 11 years
and died at the age of 14,
and his parents never forgot the emotional loss.
It seems that we,
especially good people,
often encounter more misfortunes than good things,
and in such situations,
people often think “Life is not always fair!”.
None of us can avoid difficulty,
but we can learn to control it.
We can choose not to let difficulties overwhelm us,
drowning us in a sea of suffering
by accepting it as a fact of life and growing from it.
We live in an imperfect world with imperfect people.
In that imperfect world, we are not alone.
Everyone shares their own hurt,
pain,
and loss.
The important thing is not how many difficulties people have,
but who how did you overcome those difficulties?
When hurt, whether physical or emotional,
it is essential to find meaning in that pain.
As Benjamin Franklin once wrote,
“It is the things that hurt you that will teach you”.
According to him, any pain brings us some experience,
it’s just whether we are willing to accept it and learn from it.
True success is determined by how we deal with adversity:
run away or confront,
surrender or resolve to overcome it.
A lot of courage is needed from you
Some people are always dependent on external factors.
They easily succeed when all things are favorable.
But they quickly lose their spirits and collapse
as soon as adversity gets in their way.
They don’t seem to understand that in the face of difficulty,
we have to decide for ourselves whether
to let it drown or overcome it.
To be able to stand up to the harsh reality requires a strong will of us.
Winston Churchill said:
“Courage is the first quality that a person needs
because it is the basis for the formation of other qualities”.
Here he does not mean the courage of extraordinary people
but the courage to dare to make the necessary decisions in the face
of the rigors of ordinary life.
Paul Tillich, the famous theologian
and author of The Embodiment of Courage,
when asked to explain more specifically what this means,
said,
“Courage is daring to say “yes” to life no matter how harsh it is.
Courage is knowing how to smile despite the irony of fate.”
Life is harsh… and inherently unfair,
but that doesn’t mean life isn’t beautiful,
interesting and lovely
if you know how to find it and recognize it.
“Take difficulties and misfortunes as an inevitable part of life,
hold your head high,
look at it, and say:
I will be stronger than you.
You can’t beat me.” – Ann Landers