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 7/30/2007 |
The struggle
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“Cease to struggle and you cease to live” – Chinese proverb
Most of us have struggles of one sort or another in our lives. It may be family, health, money, job, or a multitude of other things – but there’s one thing that’s for sure – if you cease struggling against the troubles that turn up in your life, you let the troubles win.
There’s an old saying that I first heard from Herb Cohen, in one of his negotiation books: “If you stop moving, they tend to throw dirt on you.” When confronted with a challenge, you have to keep working at it. You must continue to strive to overcome the challenges in your life.
There are numerous problems that may turn up in our lives. The very act of living is sometimes challenging for many people. Some people struggle with depression or health issues. Others struggle to even get enough food to eat. While most of our challenges won’t be to this level, we’re still going to have challenges – and sometimes, it’s going to be easy to sit back, say “What’s the use,” and give up.
Giving up is rarely the best course of action – struggling, no matter how time-consuming or painful it may be, is usually the right approach.
How different would this world be if the Allies had given up struggling in World War II? How different would your life be if scientists, after fighting for years to find a cure for polio, threw their hands in the air and said “I give up?” How different could your life be if you gave up at the first inkling of trouble in your life? Perhaps you do so.
Struggling – working to free ourselves from the bonds placed upon us by the world around us – is essential to our growth.
Things aren’t always going to be easy in our lives – we know that for a fact. But it’s those difficult things that we learn to conquer that make a difference in our lives over the long term.
Ultimately, the struggles are soon forgotten, once the problem is solved – but when we give up, we give up forever – and it will affect our lives for the worse.
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