"Every failure to cope with a life situation must be laid, in the end, to a restriction of consciousness. Wars and temper tantrums are the makeshifts of ignorance; regrets are illuminations come too late."
Joseph Campbell
"Trouble, oh we got trouble, right here in River City......trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble..." Robert Preston sang in the Music Man. A sign on a local hot dog shop reads: "Flowers grow through dirt." It would seem that we are all well acquainted with problems or as I like to see them "lemons." How we choose to deal with them makes the difference between whether they help us to grow and bloom like the flowers or whether we end up in the desert of regret. Problems, like weeds, pop up to cause us to focus and pay attention so that we deal with them before they take over our entire garden of life.
M. Scott Peck, M.D. in his landmark 1978 book, The Road Less Traveled, begins with a simple yet profound three word sentence: "Life is difficult." That pretty much sums it up. He then spends the rest of the book explaining from a psychotherapeutic viewpoint how we can grow through the "dirt" and bloom. While we all have problems, only by addressing them can we make the "dirt" fertile and nurturing instead of an arid wasteland. But to do that, we need "tools" to cultivate them into a useful learning situation.
After declaring that "life is difficult," a variation on the first of the "Four Noble Truths" of Buddha that "life is suffering," Peck goes on to write: "This is a great truth....because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. " He continues, "Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult." As hard as that may be to grasp, what follows is even more revealing: "Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters." Okay.
This seems to me to fly in the face of all the surface feel good advice/counsel that is prevalent today. A lot of the "how-tos" of our culture allow us to continue in the myth that "if only" we do such and such, then it will be smooth sailing. Not only will it be smooth sailing but that somehow we are entitled to it. And that if we are not living the dream in a Disney World existence that somehow we have been short changed. Instead, here is Peck coming right out and saying, "Life is a series of problems." Reminds me of my youngest brother at 14 one day declaring at the breakfast table, "Has it ever occurred to you that life is just one mess after another?" He was a sage and we didn't realize it.
Peck acknowledges the painfulness of problems because they cause us grave discomfort - "frustration or grief or sadness or loneliness or guilt or regret or anger or fear or anxiety or anguish or despair." Yuck,who wants to wade through that? Much better to eat, drink and be merry and put a surface bandage on the issue and pretend on and on until the bottom falls out. And yet still, Peck persists and calls us hither with "it is in the whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure." So in his reasoning these "lemons" are good for us because they strengthen us in both courage and wisdom. According to Peck, they actually create both our courage and wisdom and cause us to grow mentally and spiritually. Even the flowers have to grow through dirt.
If that is so, then how do we best meet the "lemons" and their challenges? Peck sums up that in one word - discipline. Yet another unpopular concept in our overly self-indulgent, feel good for the moment culture. The components that make up this required discipline are "delay of gratification, assumption of responsibility, dedication to truth or reality and balancing."
All of these qualities sound way too grown-up for our narcissistic I-want-it-now culture. Makes me pause and wonder how popular this book would have been if it were being published today and not thirty-five years ago when it topped the best-sellers list. This is a whole new generation - one that has grown up amid the proliferation of instant knowledge through the Internet; constant entertainment through electronics; fast food, ad nauseum; child focused education; myriad of activities and sports as well as creature comforts to ease any physical suffering and easy credit -buy now, pay later or not at all. The paradox in all of this easy instant gratification is that while our culture has made it so convenient for us to not discipline ourselves, we need to be even more vigilant because there is nothing to keep us from sliding over the edge. In times past, credit was not so easy to come by and so by the very structure of society, we were disciplined. That is not so today.
To be honest, I'm not all that content anymore to be inconvenienced. Discipline takes work. Recently, because we are downsizing and our house is not ready, my husband and I have moved temporarily back into his childhood home where his parents raised five children. Frequently, I have marvelled at the fact that at one time seven people occupied the small space in which my husband and I now find ourselves tripping over each other. And yet in that age before "McMansion," that house was big enough to contain a family of seven and shelter them. We've come along way baby - as the Virgina Slims commercial informed us. While that is true, the real questions are what have we lost along the way and are we really any better off? Has the quality of our lives improved? And are we better people, mentally and spiritually? And has all this instant stuff made us any more content or happy or like instant mashed potatoes just left us unsatisfied and craving something of substance?
These are questions that we each must ponder for ourselves. As with most of life's questions, my answers are a mixture of yes and no. While I would be loath to give up any of my modern luxuries, I do need to develop more discipline muscle. By not holding ourselves accountable to the four tenets of discipline, we grow soft and lazy. The bigger issue is that the problem doesn't just go away because we have chosen to ignore it. Like the weed in the garden, its roots just keep going deeper and deeper, making it ever harder to dislodge. More elaborate are the techniques that we need to develop to dodge the issue and the weaker and less able to really enjoy and deal with life, we become. The more out of control we are causes more of those discomforting feelings that we initially tried to avoid by not taking care of the problem when it first arose. Discipline is hard work but as Peck so wisely advocated, it is the necessary ingredient that makes us grow-up. And unlike Peter Pan, grow up we must if our intention is to truly live and live extraordinarily.
To truly be extraordinary, we need to discipline ourselves and see each problem for the value that it brings to our lives. Just as a successful gardener nourishes the soil and carefully tends his flowers to make sure that they bloom optimally, we need to make sure that we are using the four tools of discipline - delay of gratification, assumption of responsibility, dedication to truth or reality and balancing - to create the richest soil for our lives that we can so that we may "bloom" extraordinarily. This is a gift that we give ourselves, no one else can do it for us. So the next time, you get that unsettled feeling about something, stop and take a look. It is just a problem/lemon that has appeared to help you become the person that you are truly able to be. Square your shoulders and greet it head on armed with your four tools to transform it into courage and wisdom. In so doing, you will be preparing yourself for the next and the next and the next. This way you will be cutting edge, as Peck wrote, on the path of success. Who knew that discipline could be so fashionable?
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