Life should be Challenging

 

Photo Credit: Pinterest

Life should be Challenging

There is a poem by Robert Frost ‘The Road Not Taken’, which ends, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.” Always choose the new, the less travelled road, the unknown path and that is life’s real challenge.

Everyone follows the easier path when life arrives at a fork – the easy and the difficult, most choose the easy, the tough is chosen by a very few people. Life grows only by choosing challenges, by walking into the approaching storms, by taking risks most would run away from.

To take up meditation and become a sanyasi one needs courage. In the earlier days people expected the sanyasi to become a recluse and renounce the world. In those days one went into a monastery, lived there – undisturbed, undistracted by the world. Meditation became one’s whole life with no other distractions – life became monotonous! The words monastery and monotony come from the same root, so does the word monk. Life was settled, repetitive, monotonous and the same, and the real world was left far behind. This was easy.

Not so today! Today, it is not so easy to go into the jungles or into the Himalayas. Here, everyone in society is connected and the challenge is to remain in society and even then, not remain in society. You have to live in the marketplace and yet live as if you are living in an ashram or monastery. You have to accept all life’s distractions and yet remain unaffected and undistracted. You have to live in the world and not be in it.

Life must be a challenge. Only then is it exciting. In an obstacle race, you are forced to surmount all the obstacles: to jump over the hurdles, go through barrels, crawl under rugs, climb over walls. What would happen if, to avoid all that, you went around all the obstacles and asked for the winner’s cup? Would they give it to you? No. They would say, “You must go back and face all the obstacles.” “Why?” you might ask. “If you are interested in giving me the cup, just give it.” “Sorry. You have to prove that you deserve it, that you worked for it.” Life is also a game, and we are proving ourselves. The challenge itself is joyous.

Make your life as exciting as possible, but always think of it as fun. The adversities, as well as the harmony, should be enjoyable. Don’t be sombre and morose and have a castor oil face in the name of spirituality. Just be happy. Jump with joy. Even if you make a mistake, say, “Hey, I did this? Great! What a wonderful lesson I learned!” If you really want to, you can make everything fun – even meditation!