Seven Reasons Life Is Hard For Everyone
Is life hard for you? Do you struggle all the time? Do you wish things were easier? If so, that puts you in exactly the same boat as EVERYONE ELSE on the entire planet.
Many people don’t realize this because we trick ourselves. We think, “If I had ‘X,’ everything would be fantastic! If I could just achieve ‘Y,’ then everything would be wonderful!”
Thing is, this isn’t true. Do you know what happens when you get your heart’s desire? You walk on air for a few weeks and then, you adjust. You think, “Gosh, if I were rich, life would be easy! If I were famous, life would be grand! Wow, if I could just be that good looking, I’d never have anything to complain about.”
Except the thing is, I’ve met rich people, famous people, successful people, extraordinarily beautiful people — and guess what? They have just as many problems as everyone else. It’s just a different set of problems.
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1) Don’t we love to talk about love? Love is simultaneously the most wonderful and horrible thing in the world. It’s wonderful in that it can bond you to a soulmate with whom you will spend a significant chunk of the rest of your life, if all goes well. But under the best of circumstances, love is a LOT of work that will last, ideally, from the time it begins UNTIL YOU DIE.
Love is also horrible in that it can blind you to a partner’s faults, make you irrational almost beyond belief, or get you to commit to a soul-crushing bad marriage. Have you ever seen one of those movies where aliens are about to destroy the human race, then they finally realize what love is and change their minds? Truthfully, if the aliens understood how completely nuts love makes us, they’d probably be more likely to exterminate our species.
…… And all of that describes people who are still in love. When love ends badly, it ends in decimation.
Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life….You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like “maybe we should be just friends” turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love. — Neil Gaiman
Then there’s the worst option of all: sitting around wondering what’s wrong with you because you haven’t been in love in a long time and there’s no love on the horizon. That’s enough to make even a Kim Kardashian-style wedding look good in comparison.
C'mon, love wouldn't lie to you 6 times in a row, would it?
Next: Are friends overrated?
Aw Man, thanks. And I’ve been trying to forget about all of those saggy parts.
“Moreover, you may live longer if you exercise, but if you were able to add it up, you’d probably find that you spent most of that extra life you earned exercising.”
I think Churchill once said, “Whenever I get the urge to exercise, I lie down and wait until it passes.” He also died when he was 91. Not bad for a guy who drank, smoked cigars, and ate whatever he wanted to.
Today, living longer just means more time in the nursing home. Quick, where’s my drink? I want to smoke a cigar before dinner.
George Burns (who was well into his 90s) was once approached by a reporter, who said to him, “Mister Burns…I understand many years ago, your Doctor told you to quit smoking, quit drinking, and quit womanizing. Yet here you are, still doing all three. What does your Doctor say?”
Burns, with a lit cigar, two young ladies on his arms, and a drink, replied drily, “My Doctor is dead.”
You have a point, Libertyship46, but … you might consider…
2. Endorphins
- An endogenous opioid from the pituitary gland that blocks pain, decreases appetite, creates a feeling of euphoria (the exercise high), and reduces tension and anxiety. Blood levels of endorphins increase up to five times resting levels during longer duration (greater than 30 minutes) aerobic exercise at moderate to intense levels and also during interval training. Also, after several months of regular exercise, you develop an increased sensitivity to endorphins (a higher high from the same level of endorphins), and endorphins that are produced tend to stay in your blood for a longer period of time. This makes longer duration exercise easier (you’re feeling no pain) and it causes your exercise high to last for a longer period of time after exercise.
Better than anything Tim Leary ever came up with.
Yeah, I’ve heard of endorphins and I would be willing to bet a lot of money that exercise junkies somehow get more of them from doing their exercising than most people do. Most of us never get that “high” when we exercise, we just get tired and sore. I’ve done it myself enough times and for long enough to get my resting pulse down into the low 50′s, to know that I never get that good feeling you’re supposed to get and so I quit.
The exercise quote is here attributed to Robert Maynard Hutchins, l’infant terrible of the University of Chicago from 1929 to 1945: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/249946.Robert_Maynard_Hutchins
I often agree with a friend from college who said, “I’m allergic to exercise. It makes me sweat and breathe hard.”
No, no! Exercise is wonderful! I could sit and watch it all day!
There are additional unexpected hazards to exercise as well:
http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-plane-beach-death,0,4714193.story
Bill Hicks had a good routine comparing fitness guru Jim Fixx with Keith Richards (Yul Brynner in another version).
It’s been quite a few years now (20?), and I’m likely misremembering it a bit, but there had been a Limbaugh show where exercise was one of the main topics of the program. One person had called in describing himself as 300lbs+ and happy with it, but that he had a friend who was very much into fitness. While jogging, the friend had been struck and killed by an Iron City beer truck. Wasn’t able to verify the story though.
Enjoyed this column…even though the before and after pics of Schwarzennegger were cringe-inducing. If those don’t motivate one to do more sit-ups, nothing will.
Just the opposite, entropy wins no matter what so why bother to prolong the agony?
If the majority of Californians have your state of mind, there may be hope for California in the next generation.
Nah, most of them are from the loonie left.
I don’t know. If I make it to 63, or whatever his age was when this pic was taken, I hope I’m in this shape. It’s not really fair to compare him to when he was in his prime, almost 30 years ago. Not much of a gut on the ol’ Governator there.
I hope this article gets read by a high percentage of “Occupy Whatever” participants on their iPads and iPhones.
This bunch doesn’t need to be taught how to fish; They need college courses on how to beg more effectively.
My Mom is 81 she is in perfect health her BP is a little high but not danger high, she has glaucoma in her right eye she also has Dementia. The last of eight children to be born five boys and three girls. Mom now has only one brother left and he is 89 blind and crippled his wife is around the same age and she is the opposite of my Mom her body is wearing down.
Mom has alzhiemers all that good health is wrapped around a failing mind, The surviving aunt has a sharp as a knife mind in a failing body. Mom’s brother is the same sharp mind failing body.
I’ve watched those eight Aunts and Uncles grow old and die and it’s always the same old age, and two outcomes.
A body that can run a seniors marathon but cannot remember how to tie shoes and a sharp mind that can think and plan and do in a body that is unable to see, hear or even go outside, then death.
Those are the facts of life and death.
Terrific article.
Had one of those epiphany moments this week. I crossed one of those bucket list things off my list. On a working vacation in Hawaii with the love of my life. We took a helicopter tour out of Maui. There was one small moment when I knew this could be the time.
I felt her hand give a little squeeze when the copter rolled, gave her a little smile that is was OK, and said the sh’ma to myself so i should be ready just in case.
One week later the same tour crashed. There were no survivors. I had met the pilot a very personable young man, could have happened to anybody.
The hardest of all the things on this list is to make peace with yourself. G-d always forgives, other people sometimes, but we are hardest on ourselves.
Indeed, God always forgives, but only if you want to be forgiven. As the Psalm says, “If today you hear God’s voice, harden not your heart.” Hear the warnings of the prophets and heed them, for they speak both of the promise of salvation and the curses which will surely befall the hard of heart.
I think the psalm refers to atheists like me, who, when we hear voices, worry that we have been working too hard.
We are not hard hearted, so we don’t curse you as you curse us.
May you live to be 120.
In this kind of accident, the mistake which I think pilots made is that, unlike using the super in a roadway to take the corner, faster, in helos, the force is always parallel and to and in the same plane as the rotor axle but the center of gravity doesn’t change; so, as the rotor parallels gravity (straight down) supporting force, vanishes, . . .
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
The the abbreviated version is;
“Fu** it”
Dog, grant me the serenity to not want to change anything.
So much for Arnold’s claim that he did not use steroids. He’ll probably juice up for his next action movie and everybody will think that is what he really looks like.
Being a former Christian and now an atheist, I figured out something from my bible studies that either there is no God or if there is, he has something strange planned for the “real” Christians. Revelations makes it pretty clear that he is distilling all the billions of people who are alive or have lived, for a special purpose. That purpose, whatever it is, will be taken up by 144,000 people out of all those billions, who meet whatever specification is actually called out for in the bible. The rest of us, the dross so to speak, will be destroyed in the lake of everlasting fire. Most misinterpret this to mean we spend eternity being punished for our sins in hell but that isn’t what it says. It says whoever sins dies, but if you love God and really believe, you get to go to heaven and live forever. Argue it any way you want but it’s funny watching and listening to “true believers” try to interpret it any other way. Especially the ones who say the bible is the exact word of God, no interpretation necessary, the ones who swear that the Earth was formed some six thousand or so years ago.
Your’s is a prime and excellent example of the doctrine of perpetual errancy—touching upon people generally and professing Christians, as easily: Salvation has first to do with simple choice: “I like the idea of the greatest good—let that be G0D—who wants my friendship—that’s for me.”. Sooner or later, but some time after, G0D reveals. But with you perpetual errancy folks—why, if there’s not first space for friendship, neither can there be for revelation—you’ve still got it all figured out; and in the following way does this makes sense: “For it pleased—was in perfect logic to—G0D that, man, by means of his own understanding should be able neither to find nor to figure out unseen goodness or G0D.”. And, don’t children with their parents develop in just that way?
Thanks, I feel a lot better now.
I don’t find that love is a “lot of work” and I think we have a pretty total disagreement on the subject. Love is one of the things that makes life worth living: ask Ronald and Nancy, or Winston and Clemmie. Obviously, not everyone is fortunate in love, but just as obviously some people are. “I hate love” is an absurd oversimplification. If love were truly hateful, we’d all become forest monks and eat rice with veggies.
Your mistake here, is, I think, in taking all this too seriously, . . .
Tell you what. I’ll trade you your $50,000+ a year problems for mine… down here at $10,000 a year, no insurance, old hospital bills, in debt to the IRS, and living in a trailer.
What. No trade?
Somehow, unsurprising.