What if life never gets easier?

What if life stays hard? Like…really hard? What if the bunch of roses we were sold when we were younger:

“It’ll get easier, don’t worry. It’ll get better, don’t worry”, is in fact, 100% complete and total lip service?

REALLY?? Its not going to get easier? Ohhh man, I don’t know if I can do this… Another 20, 30, 40, 50 years of this level of 24-7 rock climbing?

Yeahhhhhh, if I could just go ahead and move to Planet Utopia instead, that’d be greeeeaaaatt.  Thanks.

No, really, though.  What if…life never gets easier. Life stays hard.
Yet,
It doesn’t really matter whether or not it gets easier – because – what happens when hard things occur in life? Or in everyday life?

What happens when you are in the gym, and you lift a size weight that is heavy enough that you struggle with it?

It is uncomfortable, it can be painful, the more reps you do and the more you push yourself to do just one more rep. You repeat this process several times over the course of a month or so, and then you add more weights and start the process all over again.

One day you decide to go light for a day just for kicks and you skip back down to the size weights you started with when you first began lifting. And what happens?

They are SO FEATHER LIGHT that you have to CAREFUL not to lift them too swiftly, lest you accidentally shot put them across the gym and knock someone in the head!!

Holy crap! These were SO HEAVY the first time – it sucked! It was painful, and you didn’t know if you could even lift them! It was not that fun! You thought, “Why am I even here?? Working out is hard!” But…

You built strength.

The weights didn’t get lighter.

They weigh just as much as they did the first time you sweated and struggled underneath them..but over time, you built up the strength and endurance to not only reconcile with them, but in fact, your capacity moved beyond their ability to condition you any further. You graduated. With more muscle! Better blood flow! Greater strength!

It is the same with life.

Life…

Will continue to be hard. Always.

Yet, if you are willing to persevere and press ahead, you will become stronger. And those situations that used to feel impossible will become eventually much more kindergarten level. You may even enjoy them, eventually!

***DISCLAIMER: This does *not* mean to stay in an abusive, unhealthy or toxic situation… Know the difference between a functioning situation and a non-functioning one. Do not confuse the value of perseverance with the wrong belief that you should persevere in ANY situation and change anyone or anything…because that is not always true – and that can indeed keep you stuck.***

However, when it comes to life in general – use this analogy to remember that it is STRENGTH, cultivated strength, miraculous strength, or any other kind of strength that will make life feel “easier”. Not life itself.

…Sometimes it is really the contrast or the opposite of something that will show you the true answer.

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