the stacked deck

I am grateful for the difficult path.  Not for the hardship, or the suffering, or the anguish and pain, but for the skills it teaches me.

For the fact that many other people will turn back, and not travel the difficult path.

The difficult path will get me to a place where few others will go.  It will build in me the skills and tools to fight the next challenge, and the next, and the next, because once you have faced something, and overcome the obstacle, and made it to the other side, you know what works.

So the next time you see an obstacle like that, it’s just ‘another one of those’, and you have the skillset to overcome it without a second thought.  You know exactly what to do, and while other people flounder around, you just keep moving.  You just keep driving forward.

You fight through the jungle, but the path you leave is hard to follow.  And that is the best part of all.

When it is so difficult, most will turn back.  Most will stop.  Most will not be willing to endure what it takes to get there.  They will settle for a life of ‘could have’ and ‘should have’ and ‘the deck was stacked against me’.

Yes, it was, and it’s stacked against all of us.

The difference is in the people who stand there, looking at the stacked deck, and complain about how hard it is.  About how unfair it is.  And they will find lots of people to commiserate with.  While those people are standing around and complaining, the doers are moving forward.

Smashing against that deck, until they break through by apparent magic to the complainers, who look at each other and say ‘I could never do that’.

And they are right.