Why is Life so Hard?

Why IS Life so hard?

I was just watching a great little film called, "Carnage", directed by Roman Polanski with Jody Foster, Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly and Christoph Waltz. A kind of modern day "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe". Entertaining, well done film.

Anyway, Jody Foster's character, "Penelope" asked the question in it that sparked these thoughts for me.

"Why is life so hard."

Why is life so hard for some people and seemingly, so easy for others?

Synergy.

Many of us, maybe most, go through life without thought to their actions and reactions to those actions. We don't tend to consider that what we do, has affects beyond our primary intentions.

But some people do. They think about it, or it's second nature to them. For whatever reason, genetics, breeding, environment, luck. Yes, Luck. In some cases, some people seem to be naturally, "Lucky".

But what is that?

Synergy.

Defined by the Free Dictionary as: "The potential ability of individual organizations or groups to be more successful or productive as a result of a merger. Also called synergism."

It's a kind of Gestalt, in reverse perhaps.

If you do something for a reason, and achieve that reason, then you have achieved a primary condition. If however, that also enables or causes another action that enhances your primary efforts, or other related or unrelated things to happen, especially if those other things enhance some other area of your life, or your efforts, then that is synergy.

If you get into the habit of doing things with secondary and even perhaps tertiary or further, then you are building a kind of Karma that will echo back on your life and efforts immediately or at some future date. When you do these things so that they interact with other things you have done, then you are perceived as being charmed, successful, or in throwing caution to the wind, Lucky.

Going through life is like you are following a road. For most people, they just follow the road. Some, maybe most, deviate by maybe a few degrees throughout their lives. Some deviant to the high road by great or very high degrees and good things always seem to happen to them. Some of those seem to work for it all the time, other's it just seems to come to them naturally, with little or no effort.

But there is another direction, the low road. These people are just like the other people, but they go the opposite direction in life. Things are always hard for them, bad things seem to befall them at every turn. It is like they are cursed, or someone is watching them and doing whatever they can to ruin their lives.

I think for most though, life just seems difficult ("Why is Life so hard?"). And that is because of choices. How they react to life, what they put into it, how they treat others, themselves. It's also about how their attitude is. How it is about themselves, about others, about things in general and things in specific.

I do believe that positive draws and breeds the positive. But that's only a part of it.

Most of it is in how you do whatever you do. Think about it.

If you close a door quietly, every time. People react to that. The door sustains a certain amount of wear and tear by way of the action of closing it. If instead, you always close it as hard as you can, it will be hard on the door, the frame, the hinges the lock. It will be hard on your arm, most likely, too. It will generate a lot of noise which will lead those who hear it to react in a certain way. Possibly if someone sees you start to close the door, they might even flinch. But if they know you always close the door gently, they will either not notice your actions much, or perhaps, they may even smile at you.

What you want to do in life is be as lazy as you can. That used to bug my ex wife when I'd say that. I've heard other pay mention that attitude of mine. One guy told me recently that he thought I was just some kind of laid back hippie type who didn't do much. But then he heard what I've done in my life, what I was doing now, and saw how and what I do normally in a working environment and said he had to admit he was impressed at how much I have done in life and still do. It's all about my demeanor, my being relaxed, remaining calm, having a sense of humor, especially when things are going wrong.

Still, it is also about how you approach issues, how you construct your solutions and implement them. My ex wife used to work very hard. But she wasn't working smart, just hard, with little recompense for her efforts. I had a lot of respect for the amount of work she did, her perseverance  Still, at some point you have to recognize if there isn't an easier or more economical way.

Here's there thing. Whenever you do something, complete a project, implement a solution for a problem, set something up, do it in a way that it will sustain itself. So that if will solve some other issue in it's being implemented, so that others or some other will also benefit from it. So that it will make some other issue easier to deal with. So that later something else will come of it, that will come back to you or others. If you can do it in a way that it becomes obvious you had something to do with it, all the better. But to set that up solely for that purpose, isn't as productive as it being inherent in the solution. If you see what I mean, and what there difference is in that.

Some of those who seem to have it good, may be carried along on the force of certain things no one can have control over in real time. Things like who you are born to, where you are born or grow up, the times you are alive in, and so on. Some of those things can be brought to your benefit by invoking change to your benefit. Some you may have to actively work around in order to bring them in line with your needs, desires and challenges.

If you find any of this interesting, you might consider reading "The Prince" by Machiavelli in 1513.

Wikipedia says this about it: "The Prince is sometimes claimed to be one of the first works of modern philosophy, especially modern political philosophy, in which the effective truth is taken to be more important than any abstract ideal. It was also in direct conflict with the dominant Catholic and scholastic doctrines of the time concerning how to consider politics and ethics."

You can read the book and head in a dastardly direction with it. But if you also consider the Golden Rule, and always treat others as you would like to be treated yourself, then you will see the positive from the negative in the reading.

What I'm trying to say here is that by our actions, we can excessively help ourselves, or excessively apply impediments to our lives. For most, we just get by. Sometimes getting a little up, sometimes down, sometimes very up or down. Mostly we don't see why these things are happening.

My contention here is this: we can change all that. Or most of it, or at least some of it. We can change our "Luck of the Draw", by selecting the Draw we choose as our Luck.

Partly, the solution is to just be aware of this situation. "Be" in the moment. See what is going on around you. See the connections things have to other things. When you act, act to the maximum possible. Try to think a step or two, or three ahead, or beyond. Ask yourself what good will this solution be to me, to others. What others?

If your solution to anything is only solving one thing, try to see your way clear to see more than one thing that can by positively affected by your actions. Do things to benefit others, not just yourself. It seems like a waste at times, but it does come back to positively affect you. Not always, some of it is waste, it does you no good whatsoever. But it builds a habit, and attitude, an orientation, that does come back around to positively affect you.

It may take a year, two, or three. But if you do all this, I guarantee you that you will start to think, How did life get so much easier all of a sudden. And I will also guarantee you, it won't just be, "Blind Luck".