You always hear that life is hard.
You hear about the trials, the tribulations, the aches, pains, annoyances, difficulties, uphill battles, catastrophes, tragedies, disasters and problems. You hear that there's never enough time, that there is too much time. You have too much to do; people are annoying you; things are annoying you, and you are annoying you.
Well, that's annoying.
You hear life is hard. Hard compared to what?
If hard equals long, then sure, life is the hardest thing there is. After all, it does last from the moment that we are born to the moment that we die -- a feat few other things can boast.
And I suppose there are a lot of hard things in life, but people tend to forget that there are a lot of easy things too.
If I were to get up in the morning, take a shower and get dressed unharmed, I would surely forget about it quickly, for it was meaningless and not worthy of a permanent place in my mind.
If I were to fall in the shower and break my back, however, I would remember that day for the rest of my difficult life. I'll take thousands of showers in my years and fall maybe once. So there is only one hard shower in all of that.
If things were reversed, however, and I fell everyday, I would certainly remember a day when I did not fall.
You forget whatever happens most often.
Therefore, since we think life is hard, easy things must happen most often. I would venture to guess that only ten minutes of an average day are hard. Sure, some days are full of hardness, but others are not difficult. Consider the following:
Waking up in the morning: hard. Going to bed at night: easy.
Running a 5-kilometer race: hard. Walking to your car: easy.
Making an important decision: hard. Enjoying the benefits of a good choice: easy.
Losing a friend: hard. Having friends everyday, even though some are lost: easy.
Love: hard. Being loved: easy.
Dieting: hard. Chewing: easy.
Moving a couch: hard. Lying on a couch: easy.
Death: hard. Life: easy.
The hard things happen, but good things dominate the minutes, days and years of our lives. We just don't notice.
Take time to notice the moments, instants, seconds, minutes, days, hours and years of your life that are simple, that are fun, that are beneficial, that are enjoyable, that are wonderful and that are beyond description.
Do that and then see what life is like.
Jeremy Duncan, the typical teen in the comic strip "Zits," summed it up pretty well when he said, "It's amazing the amount of pressure we put on ourselves when we assign the same degree of importance to everything."
So take a shower. I hope you don't fall, but if you do, remember that you didn't fall yesterday.
Write to Jay at jdkenworthy@bsu.edu
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