Hands of struggle by mopics80 @ Flickr
I want to share with you some of the opening lines of one of my favorite books. These paragraphs come from The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth by the late M. Scott Peck, M.D. They apply to a lot of the things that we’ve written about here at Thoughtwrestling:
Life is difficult.
This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. 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.
Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others. I know about this moaning because I have done my share.
In these paragraphs Peck describes one of the Four Noble Truths, as taught by the Buddha. This Noble Truth is sometimes described by the statement “life is suffering”. I like the way that Peck has phrased the statement because “life is suffering” implies that life on Earth is a form of penitence, a series of tortures designed to inflict pain and anguish on everyone. As Peck describes below, the reality of most people’s lives is different:
Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them? Do we want to teach our children to solve them?
In businessspeak, you would replace the word problem with opportunity, something that I’ve written about previously. But really, in the context that Peck is using, opportunity may be the better word. Peck describes this a bit more below, while also talking about how we cope with the challenges that life (or, more properly, our actions) throws at us:
Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems.
What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one… Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning.
When I came up with the concept of thoughtwrestling, there were a couple of different things that I wanted to talk about. One was in the context of creative work: how do you get your mind and your ideas organized so that you could do the creative work that you wanted to do. As I’ve read and thought more about things like how the brain works and the nature of this thing that we call willpower, the concept of thoughtwrestling takes on a broader meaning.
We are constantly at war with ourselves, although it doesn’t seem like it most of the time. Every day, every hour, every minute and every second, your brain has to deal with multiple desires and impulses. Your conscious mind, such as it appears to be, seems to be more of an afterthought and an attempt at directing a cantankerous herd of wild horses that all want to run in their own directions. When you’re tired, you have to fight the urge to rest with the joy you may be experiencing or the need to do something while your energy reserves are low. When you are hungry, the presence of delicious food battles against your inability to take a break and eat or against your desire to maintain a healthy weight.
The thoughtwrestling that you have to do every day may be as simple as choosing a piece of fruit over a piece of candy. It might be the choice between sleeping in 30 minutes or getting up early to write or to exercise. It might be staying home to study instead of going drinking with your friends. Or it might be the choice between watching television and confronting a personal problem. Or acknowledging the drinking problem that’s been slowly but surely killing you.
Thoughtwrestling isn’t always about choosing the road less traveled but it’s always about choosing the more difficult path. The journey that’s initially painful and slow has its own benefits – it makes you stronger, more patient and more determined.
These ideas continue to be important to me today as I try to take on new challenges. I’m trying to change my creative output from short regular bursts to longer, more carefully constructed work. I’ve also started to learn Kung Fu, which is no piece of cake for an overweight, out of shape, middle-aged man. Both of these are very difficult things to do, at least for me and there’s always lots to do and little time. But I know that this work is valuable.
Discipline seems to be a key factor in keeping myself on the more difficult path. It’s also something that I need to use more. There’s some interesting ideas about this in Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. I think that’s what I’ll write about next.
How do you keep yourself moving along the more difficult path?
I really don’t have a whole lot to say about the co-founder of Apple Computers, who passed away on October 5 after a long battle with illness. But here’s something.
I’m only part of the way through this book but I can already recommend 