On Living

"Life is hard."

I learned that from Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled, in my Ethics in Mass Media class on Monday, September 20. Just kidding...that was a part of the day's lecture, but obviously, no one needs a book to tell you life's hard--to make that observation, all anyone's got to do is live.

The thing is, I could never trade these three words. Not for the world.

An easy life, to me, speaks of a life devoid of growth--a stagnant life characterized by complacency and missed opportunities. An isolated, glassy pool, placid, calm, unrippled by wind or creature, entirely still. Imagine floating on that...no dangers, no worries, with complete and unfettered serenity.

After a while, though, I imagine we would start to get bored. After a little bit longer of a while, we would notice (or maybe we wouldn't notice it right away?) a growing feeling of weakness, muscles that give way far too easily after such a lack of use. Our brain would begin to haze in the absence of stimulation. Our heart would begin to numb over, begin to forget what it was like to feel, it hadn't been touched in so long.

Now picture yourself thrashing about in a tumultuous, storm-struck ocean. Again, your muscles seem weak beyond reason, but that's because you've been fighting just to keep your mouth and lungs from filling up with water. The waves tower, they terrify, they crash down upon your head with little reason and even less mercy. All you can think about is the shock of bright blue that you know will come soon, because you remember it; you've seen it before.

And then it finally does. Clouds part and are swiftly shattered by warm, inviting rays; that bright blue sky fills your soul with wonder and relief, and you rejoice at the amazing feeling that can only come after fighting such a storm. You're sore, maybe, and surely tired, but you know you have grown stronger for it.

And there is no lack of stimulation, here in this particular ocean. Some days you'll explore all the experiences to be had in its rolling waters; some days you'll just lie on your back and enjoy white streaks of cloud chasing each other. Some nights, awestruck by the divine beauty offered to the soul, you'll drink in glorious, otherworldly colors as they stretch across the expanse of the sky and fade into a dark, twinkling velvet. Other nights you may see in the distance a patch of sky kneading itself into a swirling mass of rain and wave.

Storm or sunset, you've never felt so alive.


Life may be hard. But that's a cop-out when unaccompanied by an admission of everything else it would offer us, should we choose to see it that way.

So maybe I would trade those three words, after all, for three more...

Life is rich.