i don't like it when people say "i know for a fact." drives me crazy. just like when people, especially athletes, say, "(blah, blah, blah)......know what i mean?" drives me crazy.
M.Scott Peck, american psychiatrist and author of The Road Less Traveled, brilliantly said in the opening of that ground-breaking book published in 1978 that, "Life is difficult. Once we truly know that life is difficult — once we truly understand
and accept it — then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is
accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”
the problem is, even those of us who accept it, don't accept it. even Christians who have the difficult life example of Jesus Christ don't accept that life is difficult. we might think we accept that life is difficult, we might say we accept that life is difficult, but (practically) nobody accepts that life is difficult. on the contrary, we think that life should be, if not easy, per se, then at least pretty nice most of the time. and when it's not, look out.
people mix up expecting life to be difficult and accepting that it is. i'm not sure that there's any worse confusion in all of life than that one.
expecting problems is one thing. you look around, you see tons of them, and you figure, sooner or later, some of them are gonna come your way. you expect them. but when they actually show up, you say, "why me?" and if you don't say, "why me?" you at least say (or think), well, dammit.
why dammit? why not, "life is difficult - and because i truly understand and accept that life is difficult, my life is no longer difficult. because now that i accept that this problem makes my life difficult, this problem no longer makes my life difficult." why don't we say that?
because we don't believe it. and we don't accept it.
and i, for one, know that for a fact.
know what i mean?
