Let’s be honest: Life is full of disappointments, trials, challenges and disillusionment.  There are incredible joys and moments of bliss, but the self-help, pull-yourself-up-by-the-britches, see-the-silver-lining, glass-is-half-full attitude adjustment is just that, an attitude adjustment.  It’s rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  Okay, so we’re not necessarily on the Titanic.  But my point is that optimism is to life as spray-on-tan is to soaking up the rays on a tropical beach.  We may appear, even to ourselves, happy, but beneath the surface there’s still a blindingly non-tan, semi-stressed and mildly unhappy person.  Feeling good is a lot of work!  Exercise, eat healthy, don’t over-indulge on sweets or alcohol, don’t smoke, exercise, meditate or pray or do something that soothes your soul, eat healthy, avoid negative people, reduce the drama, find fulfilling work, exercise, be authentic and honest, but also kind and considerate, and exercise.  Don’t forget to breath too.  In with the good, out with the bad. Repeat.  Everything, not just the breathing. 

Yes, I realize some of  those things are in there more than once.  I was making a point.

Trying to balance everything and keep it in perspective and manage priorities as well as pay the bills, get the kids fed and to their sports and help them with homework and deal with the messes and handle the crisis at work and nurture your marriage or relationship with a significant other.  Houdini would probably prefer to stay wrapped in chains, locked in a steel trunk and buried under concrete than to escape to the lives most people have. 

Scott Peck’s best-seller of the 80’s The Road Less Traveled starts with the words: Life is difficult.  Thanks, Scott (may you rest in peace).  I paid money to read that life is difficult?  Which makes me wonder why you might still be reading this.  You are, aren’t you?  Please be.  Okay, since you are, I’ll make a point. 

So we’re on this ship with masts and sails and we’re at sea with no land in sight and the waves are beginning to be frighteningly big and the clouds look menacing—which is really scary, since being a menace implies consciousness.  We’re a part of a crew and we’re doing our job, whether it’s battening hatches or hoisting something or lashing something down or whatever it is.  It’s not a cruise ship we’re on, though the seas can be calm at times and the sunsets unimaginably beautiful.  We have to make do with the gruel, but at least we have gruel.  We have to put up with our shipmates, but we’re not alone and we’re clearly sharing the experience with others.  It could be worse, after all there are sharks in the water and it’s a long way to swim to shore. 

If you need the self-help stuff to make the journey seem less stressful or difficult, then fine, use the stuff.  The best news for me in the midst of all the challenges and trials and the wounds I receive—usually because of myself—is that into all of it (and I mean ALL OF IT) is stitched love.  And that love makes putting up with all the other stuff worthwhile.  It even motivates me to help out my crewmates—some who are even real jerks.  Some may have a way of explaining the love as an evolutionary necessity for survival—otherwise we’d all probably find the nearest cliff and just take a walk over it.  Love, for some is a chemical event in the nervous system, which it most likely is.  But I choose to believe it’s something more than that too.  I know for sure that I choose to act in love at times when there’s no chemistry compelling me to do so.  I’m pretty certain that many people who are mistreated, yet forgive, are doing so because of something more than chemistry. 

Life is hard, it is difficult, it takes courage and effort and a willingness to keep getting up when you’ve been knocked down.  Thank God, there’s love to make it all worth it.   

Sometimes we have to wait for it to show itself, sometimes we have to dig to find it, sometimes we have to trust that is real, because the alternative is not something any of us want.  Thankfully, it’s not something we have to settle for, if we don’t let the hassles overwhelm us—so find a way, ask for help, find something worth getting up for every day.  Don’t give up-ever.  And keep breathing: in with the good, out with the bad.  Repeat.

© Stephen Carl