Readers of this blog will recall that I wrote about the second of the Great Truths in last month’s blog: Love Is Work.
Today we are discussing the third Great Truth on which all people should base their understanding, work at and maintenance of all their relationships.
Life Is Difficult.
Although I will say more about this in future instalments of the Relationship series, it is a crucial truth to hold central in one’s view when we are dealing with anybody else. We live in a world where the natural order of things is to become broken down. Therefore the natural order of relationships also is to diverge, weaken, fizzle and disintegrate. No matter how much we love somebody at the start, life will have its way with us. Sooner or later there will be a miscommunication, an inaction, a misrepresentation, a pipe that burst, a traffic violation, a wound obtained or an important date forgotten.
If we do not remember that life is difficult, then we will begin to grumble about why life is not easy, or to keen why we are not as happy as we ought to be. If we know that life is hard, then we know that relationships are hard, and that they require constant work and necessitate a determined will to patch up what is divergent, weakened, fizzling or disintegrating.
If we do not remember that life is difficult, and we forget that other people always put their best foot forward in public (even more so during this age of social media), it will appear to us as if our relationships are not as easy, or much more complicated, than everybody else’s. This is not true.
Everybody’s relationships are subjected to the difficulties of life. Everybody’s difficulties are different, and the grass does look greener on the other side of the fence, because the owner of the grass field has erected a green film on the boundaries between us and them.
Yes, we all want to be happy.
Yes, we know that great relationships make for great happiness. Yet, to get there is as much a career as the one that everybody chooses. In the relationship “career” there is no retirement age and no free pension. The effort may well be just as hard on the last day as on the first, because life is difficult.
The third Great Truth: Life Is Hard.
Dr. Strauss l Wellness Lead
Follow me on Twitter @DrPieterStrauss
