Knock, knock.
Who's there?
A human.
A human who?
A human who struggles with things, just like you.
What I hope you just got out of my corny little intro is that every single person in your life is struggling with something, including yourself. We all struggle. Every single one of us has a mountain that we have to climb, and in all honesty, sometimes we are on that mountain for so long that we forget what flat land is really like.
Is this you? Have you been on this mountain for what seems like forever? Does it seem like everything you are trying to do is producing little to no results? Are you stuck? Yeah, most people are...I was. I am.
There's no sense in sugarcoating life. Sometimes life just sucks, and when we are knocked down, it feels almost stupid to get back up and keep going forward, but we can all agree that that's what we are supposed to do. Like it or not, we are creatures of hope. We hope for happy endings;; we hope for true love; we hope for truth and justice.The problem is that we are not only creatures of hope but also creatures of action. We can spend every day of our lives hoping and hoping that things are going to change, but unless we take some action, some initiative, then we can be certain that nothing will.
Let's go back to that mountain that you're on. What is it? Is it an addiction, depression, anxiety, a divorce, a fight with friends, a struggle with school, a struggle with acceptance, something else entirely? Now we've identified it. Good job. What are you doing to scale that mountain? What are you doing every single day to overcome that burden in your life? If you're struggling with your weight, are you eating right every single day? Are you exercising every single day and doing everything thing that it takes every hour of the day to meet your goal? Are you really? Every hour? Of every day?
It's harder than it sounds, and I would bet that a majority of people who do have these struggles aren't doing everything they can to overcome them. The fact of the matter is that when you are presented with burdens in your life, you have entered into a war zone. It is you versus it, and we are constantly fighting those battles within ourselves. The second you let up, the second you give in, the second you fail to do what you are supposed to do, the enemy advances. Once the enemy advances, you have to fight much harder to get back to where you once were. Are we going to give in, divulge into a dirty habit, overeat, or defame someone else? Or are we going to resist?
That's the first step, not giving in, but what comes next? It becomes much more complicated when we are resisting temptation every single hour of every single day and we become stagnant. We're still not over that mountain, but we're still stuck somehow. Well, if you've been diagnosed with cancer and the doctors have stopped it from spreading, do you still have a tumor? Of course you do! If all you've done is stopped your problem from growing, then you haven't solved it. You still have a long journey ahead of you.
So start walking. Pick up your feet and go, but walk in a way that creates movement. Stop taking baby steps and barely moving. You have to show progress and outpace your enemy, or pretty soon, he's going to be right up on your heels again.
Keep taking your precautions, your medicine; keep hoping, keep praying, but keep moving forward.
