Usually as I write these articles, I have a clear idea of how I want it to sound and what it will entail, but that wasn't so this week. To be honest, I couldn't even tell you in what direction this article is going to go, but I heard someone speak last week on a similar idea and it made me think in a new way. This has been on my heart and mind, so I hope it connects to some of you as it as to me.
It's the end of the semester and summer is supposedly only three weeks away. I walked outside this morning to three inches of snow on the ground—doesn't look like "spring" to me—and piles of homework that left me not knowing where to start. How can this be anywhere near the end? With so much going on in college, all the time, not just with school, but at jobs, with friends, in clubs and sports, socially, the list goes on and on. And sometimes it seems never ending. So naturally, we all reach that point. When everything that has been thrown on our shoulders is too much for us to handle so we tumble to the ground and everything on our back falls with us. Once in a while (or a lot) it becomes so hard to the point that we really don't think we can do it anymore. Our naturally tendencies are to run away, to give something up, to just say "you win world, I'm done," and back out of what it is we are struggling through. It makes complete sense though. We want to live in our comfort zone. Nobody strives to be overwhelmed, exhausted, drained, confused. It is usually easiest to just walk away. If we step back from that struggle, it will go away. If I withdraw from a class, I don't have to spend hours every night studying. If I quit my sport, I won't have to wake up at 4 a.m. to run each week. If I quit my job, I won't get yelled at by my boss every day. However, while the problem may go away, where are we now? Just as things got hard, when they reached their toughest point and our true strength is being tested, we often are tempted to say, "You know what? Never mind, I'm all right without that, I'll be OK." And we will be just that, OK. Not good, not great, just OK. In the moment, it may make things easier, but what do we learn and did we improve?
I am so guilty of this, as we all are. But the most valuable lessons, the biggest improvements and the best rewards come from sticking with these problems. When we fight our nerves to run as far as we can away from whatever it is that we are facing, we are only making ourselves better. The problems that come into our life, believe or not, are always there for a reason. It is hard to us to put this in perspective often because there are a lot of things we go through in life that suck so bad, we wonder how there could possibly be an explanation for them. Especially with things like the death of a loved one, a sickness of a friend, a divorce within a family or anything else that brings such sorrow and struggles to a life. These things are often worse than those I already mentioned because you can't really walk away as easy. You can't change what is happening by leaving it behind so know you are forced to stick through it. It's hard to sit through these problems and say "you know what, I'm fine and this is fine because it's supposed to be like this" because that's not how we think. During college and for the rest of our lives, we are going to be faced with problems and struggle, it's called life. However it's the way we deal with them that truly shape who we will be and what our life will become. We need to realize that it all does happen for a reason and whatever problem you are struggling through is shaping your life to how it should be. One day down the road, when this struggle is a part of the distant past, you will look back and realize the ways in which that really hard, crappy, stressful time, made you better, stronger, more-equipped, happier or whatever it may be. So I challenge you, if nothing else, for the rest of the week or even the day, be mindful of the hard times you are facing in your life in this moment. Try to have the strength to fight through the storm. Keep climbing the mountain. You will get through this and you will find the better you that is waiting on the other side of this stuggle.
