A Difficult Life

"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 understand and accept it -- then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters."

-- M. Scott Peck

Acceptance. Not a virtue that's widely touted in these post-modern times. It almost smacks of surrender, another valuable quality that's gotten a bad rap. And yet, as Scott Peck points out, acceptance is the royal road to transcendence.

I remember watching a piece on 60 Minutes once about a famous violinist who was very old and crippled with arthritis. He would wake each day in terrible pain. and yet he would rise from his bed, eat his breakfast and go on about his day. In a matter of hours the same arthritic fingers that he awoke with were playing the most beautiful concertos. His life was difficult. No matter. He transcended all difficulty with acceptance and love.

I'm sure that you have at least a few, and perhaps a butttload of, situations in your life that could be termed "difficulties." If you focus on them as such, if you continue to piss and bitch and moan about how difficult life is, it will continue to be difficult. If, on the other hand, so-called difficulty is seen as just part and parcel of life, it no longer matters. Life just is what it is, and the difficulty is transcended.

Try it. Just for today, breathe in, breathe out and accept your current lot in life. Know that while your life circumstances may change and improve, life itself will continue as it is, continue to be difficult, until you accept whatever is and transcend the idea of difficulty altogether.

And don't expect transcendence to come as an all-in-one, bolt of lighting type deal. It comes in, and from, each moment of acceptance. You may go for minutes, hours, days, or more fighting life's difficulties, and then in a moment of clarity, a moment of grace, find acceptance and transcendence. And that moment may be all too fleeting, and you find yourself back in the difficulty stew again.

No matter. As you string the pearls of awareness together over time, acceptance becomes your default mode. It becomes your SOP in the world, and then it's difficulty, not acceptance that become a vague memory. And it all starts with one moment of acceptance, right here, right now, today.