Struggles

The idea for these words came from someone else a gent called Brandon Stanton in his book ‘Humans’. He writes.

‘Everyone has a story because every person has a struggle. The obstacle that has been faced and hopefully overcome.  Struggles are crucial because they’re transformative’.

As I read those words they resounded clearly and loudly with me. They resonated and I knew them to be True. I have never met anyone who hasn’t had some kind of struggle and who hasn’t been changed by their struggle. Sometimes the struggle finds us. The unexpected accident, illness or death. Sometimes we inflict the struggle upon ourselves. We make woeful decisions. Our words and actions are poorly chosen or we leave things until it’s too late.

But our struggles are not to be shied away from. Nor must we pretend to ourselves and to others, that it is not happening and that somehow it doesn’t matter. It matters… a lot. Properly and bravely faced our struggles can be conquered. We may not think that we have ‘won’. We may feel depleted and deflated. Things may not have turned out the way we had hoped, but so long as we stand firm in the whirlwind of struggle, we can be transformed into someone even more beautiful, engaging and compassionate.

Perhaps the loveliest thing about struggle is that it connects us one with another. We relate to and understand each other. Relationships are welded in the heat of struggle. The more candid we can be, the more vividly that our pain is expressed and shared, the more compassion it elicits and the more powerful the bond that is forged. And if all that be true, how come when we seem to have multiples of struggles on so many levels… how come we seem more disengaged, disjointed and disconnected?