Primarily in America there is an overwhelmingly widespread belief that everything should be easy, and that we should always be happy. While I’m no antagonist of happiness, I do think that obsessing over it is actually counter-productive to achieving it, and also leads people into some otherwise easily dodged traps, foolish decisions, and unreasonable expectations.
Take diet and exercise, for example. This is a dimension of the American lifestyle that is astonishingly absent, especially in light of the extent to which the majority of Americans are dissatisfied with their weight.
Marketing and pharmaceutical companies have picked up on this dissatisfaction and have released product after ineffective product, designed to make weight-loss “easy and fast.”
The simple fact, however, is that losing weight is never easy or fast. It takes endurance, patience, self-control, and a little bit of suffering to lose weight and be healthy. But people don’t want suffering. And so they keep doing exactly what they’ve always done, wishing they could just be happy.
I believe that suffering should be welcomed and not cowered away from; that suffering and happiness go hand in hand; that you can’t understand one without the other.
Life is a miracle and was meant to be good, but was not meant to be easy. Even in nature, the best and most beautiful things are hard-earned. Consider T.S. Eliot’s verse from “The Wasteland”: “April is the cruelest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land.” The message here is that while April is often considered a beautiful month when flowers are blooming, it is actually a painful process. Coming back to life in the middle of a wasteland is hard.
The same is true with life and happiness.
Don’t expect life to be all roses — even roses, as they say, have thorns. If you anticipate hardship, and are willing to work through it, to endure even when hopeless, your happiness will be richer, and your joy more complete.
Byline:
This is a guest post from Jacelyn Thomas. Jacelyn writes about identity theft for IdentityTheft.net. She can be reached at: jacelyn.thomas @ gmail.com.
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