Life is Hard

Have you ever heard the phrase: 

"I learned it the hard way"? 

What does that mean exactly? Was the person that said that phrase for the very first time looking for an easy way to learn something, but ended up learning it a more difficult way? Was there some sort of physically tough obstacle in the way of his quest to learn whatever he was seeking? 

I think, generally speaking, learning something the hard way comes with some type of challenge attached. Like, "I went the hard way" versus "I went the easy route". Also, I think that when you "learn something the hard way" it tends to leave a more impressionable mark.

These are some of the questions that came to mind when I read the following passage from a book called Fathered by God by New York Times Best-Selling Author, John Eldredge; the subtitle: Learning What Your Dad Could Never Teach You:

"Life is hard. While he is the beloved son, a boy is largely shielded from this reality. But a young man needs to know life is hard, that it won't come to you like Mom used to make it come to you, all soft and warm and to your liking, with icing. It comes to you more the way Dad makes it come to you - with testing, as on a long hike or trying to get an exhaust manifold replaced. Until a man learns to deal with the fact that life is hard, he will spend his days chasing the wrong things, using all his energies trying to make life comfortable, soft, nice, and that is no way for a man to spend his life." 

I was genuinely angry after reading this small paragraph. And I'm going to assume that at least one other person in this world has felt like this - I realized that I spent too many years of my life trying to make everything comfortable. After reading this passage, the truth that resonated struck me at the core and literally brought me to a state of severe frustration(another one of those palm-slaps-forehead moments, except I was in the car so I punched the steering wheel instead).

Now, my own time and energy wasted was only half of my dilemma. Because after I was purely aggravated about my own existence, I started to think of all of my friends and this same truth being evident in many of them. I started to think of people that I don't even consider friends anymore because if I felt my heart telling me I needed to share some truth with them - I resisted. There was such a sensitive atmosphere around them that I refused to follow my heart and potentially offend them. 

Brevity and Transparency are core principles that drive me. But I know hundreds of people that suffer from this mental disease of being offended too easily; myself, at times, included. My passion for changing the lives of future generations has clouded that inclination to "play it safe" with people I care about, and that same passion has fueled my resolve to include this principle at the core of this entire paradigm shift:

Life is Hard.

Listen to ET's advice: