When I saw this quote, there were a few things I thought about right away. First, on how true it really is. As this weekend there were some struggles in our house with moving both of our kids back home from their college apartments. My wife and I rented a truck to bring home the furniture and other things that they had with them and moved it all back home into our garage, our house, basement, etc. Of course the kids were there too – it would not have gotten done without us helping each other. We got it all done and it actually went a lot better than I thought it would.
Another thing that connected with me and this quote was from my Principles of Leadership classes that have been going on this spring term at school. Just about all the speakers, movies, presentations, articles, audios, and video clips have had this common theme with them too. The message from those: There will be struggle, but the struggle is what makes the journey worth it. We can’t get out of life without struggles. There is that saying that life is 10% of what happens to us and 90% as to how we react to those things.
It is amazing to hear and see so many others have struggles too. In today’s world of social media where many people post things online as to how wonderful things are going, all the great pictures of family and friends, and all the celebrations and achievements – it’s no wonder where this can depress or upset people. I am finding out that just about all the people posting those wonderful things do indeed have struggles going on. It’s not even just people posting things out on social media – others are struggling too.
I have also found out within those struggles comes opportunity. Dr. Randy Pausch (The Last Lecture) talked a lot about the brick walls in life. Those represent those things that get in the way of our lives, the struggles that we all must figure out. Yes, we need to overcome those brick walls, go over them, go around them, heck even go under them if we have to. Randy talked about another angle that I want you to think about. He mentioned that those brick walls are there for us to show how bad we want to accomplish things in life. They are there to keep others out that don’t want it bad enough. Please understand there will be others that get in your way. They are part of that struggle for sure. He pointed out that some of our brick walls won’t be made out of brick at all. They will be made of flesh, for they will be people that we have to get through or get around to obtain our goals and dreams. Knowing that this will be coming our way throughout life, make the decision now to not let these brick walls stop us. Figure out some ideas now!