To paraphrase what I wrote in this Instagram post, I can only be as good as my toughest opponent, meaning my most challenging challenge. The bigger the hurdle, the better.
The more challenging the challenge, the better.
Life is challenge, and that's why I love it.
In a sense, life is outer war. To be alive, is to be at war.
You can choose to have grace, gracefulness, and inner peace while your body is fighting this outer war and dealing with the wonderful challenge that is life. Your spirit can be at rest while your hands are at work, doing the beautiful wonderful work that is life.
The philosopher Albert Camus once wrote, "Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy."
I answer it with YES. That's not a guess. It's an answer that I wrote a whole book to explain. Anyone who reads my book and follows its suggestions can likewise answer Camus's question with a loud confident certain honest YES.
YES, life is so worth living. YES, I am so thankful this world exists rather than nothing. YES, this is heavenly, beautiful, perfect, and amazing. YES, I am so grateful. YES, every second I am awake in this world, I am grateful.
Life is a challenge, and, YES, I love it.
Even when I get punched in the face or encounter especially challenging challenges...
Correction: ESPECIALLY when I get punched in the face by life or encounter especially challenging challenges, then I say to life:
"Thank you, Life, for doing your best to punch me in my face and often succeeding. Thank you, Life, for being such a worthy opponent, because if you were a less worthy (a.k.a. less tough or less challenging) opponent, I would be proportionally less happy due to the lack of challenge and the lack of having a worthy opponent. Thank you, Life, for constantly challenging me and never letting me rest for very long without a wake-up punch to the face. I love challenges! So thank you for constantly challenging me."
The more I love challenge and embrace discomfort, the more I transcend comfort addiction and transcend temptation and thereby realize my invincible spiritual freedom and infinitely graceful unwavering invincible inner peace.
All humans are on the addiction spectrum, some much more or less than others. And the most common and fundamental addiction is the addiction to comfort.
The unique props in each person's version of the common struggle that unites us all are typically just diverse superficial manifestations of comfort addiction, slavery to temptation and bodily urges and feelings, and thus being imprisoned in the miserable hellish comfort zone, which ironically isn't really any more comfortable than these lands of happy freedom one gets to enjoy once one leave the comfort zone (i.e. transcends addiction and transcends slavery to temptation and bodily urges and feelings like hunger and fear).
A life without challenge would be a life not worth living. One would be like Mike Tyson if he only fought kindergartners. One would be like a poker player who never even gets the chance to bluff, because his cards are always so very so-called lucky and his opponents so bad and unworthy of his skill. One would be like a chess player who only faces such bad, unskilled, and unworthy opponents that he never even gets the opportunity to pull off a beautiful move like the queen's gambit. Maybe he never even gets to pull off any gambit. Maybe he never even loses a single piece ever in any game, because his opponents are just that bad.
Luckily life isn't like that.
Luckily, life is challenge.
Luckily, life is filled with a never-ending barrage of hurdles and obstacles and challenges.
Thank you, Life, for being such a worthy (i.e. tough) opponent. Please, be even tougher (i.e worthier). Please, be the absolute toughest (i.e. most worthy) opponent you can.
The worthier (i.e. tougher) you are, the better I get to be.
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott
- Comfort addition is miserable hellish spiritual slavery. I say, become a full-fledged free spirit!
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In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.
