The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: M. Scott Peck
- Publish Date: February 4, 2003
- Language: English
- Genre: Spiritual Self-Help
- Format: PDF/ePub
- Size: 10 MB
- Pages: 315
- Price: Free
- ISBN: 0743243153
Problems and Pain
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.
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? Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to salve life’s
problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only
* The first of the “Four Noble Truths” which Buddha taught was
“Life is suffering.”
DISCIPLINE
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 f confronting
and solving problems is a painful one. Problems, depending
upon their nature, evoke in us frustration or grief or sadness
or loneliness or guilt or regret or anger or fear or anxiety or
anguish or despair. These are uncomfortable feelings, often
very uncomfortable, often as painful as any kind of physical
pain, sometimes equaling the very worst kind of physical
pain. Indeed, it is because of the pain that events or conflicts
engender in us all that we call them problems. And since life
poses an endless series of problems, life is always difficult and
is full of pain as well as joy.
Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. Problems are the cutting edge
that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call
forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our
courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that
we grow mentally and spiritually. When we desire to encourage the growth of the human spirit, we challenge and encourage the human capacity to solve problems, just as in school
we deliberately set problems for our children to solve. It is
through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that
we learn.
As Benjamin Franklin said, “Those things that hurt,
instruct.” It is for this reason that wise people learn not to
dread but actually to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems.
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