NOBODY EVER TOLD ME LIFE WOULD BE EASY

Nobody ever told me that life would be easy, but I got lots of warning that it would be hard.  Time and again I was told to prepare myself for a life that would test me, and most of that preparation was taken care of by my parents.  They did a good job of making sure I was properly educated so I could make a living.  They pushed me to be a responsible person who met challenges when they came along, and they did their best to prepare me for that too.  None of us get a free ride, I was told time and again.  Nothing is free.  We all face hardships, and when those things come along, we buckle down and do our best to work through them.  I was taught to trust God, to turn to him when I was hard up against it, but I was also taught that God had already set me up with a good mind and body so I could handle my own affairs.  Nobody ever told me life would be easy . . . but my expectations for a good life were high.  I didn't expect an easy life, but I did expect a good one, and I've always felt like living a good life was mostly up to me.

Now that my life is mostly behind me, I still have high expectations.  Looking back, life hasn't been easy by a long shot, but it has been worthwhile.  Has it been a good life?  I don't really know how to gauge exactly how good it has been, but it's been fairly productive and at times enjoyable.  But it has always been an uphill struggle for me, seldom ever easy, and marked with lots of disappointments.  "If you don't expect a lot, accept that you'll often come up short of expectations, you'll have less disappointment in life," my mother once told me.  And by saying that, she wasn't trying to say that I should expect less of life.  Just be prepared for disappointments, especially when you strive for a lot.

I've failed at a lot of things, came up short of expectations with most things I've tried to do, but I usually got somewhere.  In other words, there have been some successes in those failures.  I didn't get to the top, but I got part of the way there.  I didn't get exactly what I wanted, but I got some of it . . . and having a good life might well come from being satisfied with those partial successes.  I wasn't a wonderful father or husband, but I tried to be, and I got the job done well enough most of the time.  I wasn't a wonderful college professor either, but I was a good one.  I made lots of mistakes as a coach, but I had some success there too.  But some of the greatest happiness I've know in life has come from unexpected sources . . . from being successful at some things I never expected to be good at.

I'm a man with lots of formal education, and it served me well.  I have no real training at most things relating to craftsmanship, but I somehow acquired the ability to build things.  I learned to do woodwork early on and eventually became a decent enough guitar builder.  I learned to draw and paint some, and I became a fairly decent musician.  I learned to write, and that lead to becoming a novelist, songwriter, and a poet.  I've learned to do a lot of things that have made life a lot more enjoyable than just being what I was trained and prepared for.  And none of those things have been easy, and looking back at it now, I wouldn't have wanted them to be.  It's the hard things in life that have me a stronger person.  It's the disappointments that have pushed me to do better.  It's the pain and suffering I've endured from time to time that turned me in a direction I needed to go.

. . . nobody ever told me that life would be easy, and I'm glad they didn't.  With time growing short for me, I'm content and at peace with life, and I'm ready for the challenge of living out what's left of it.  That means more disappointments, but it doesn't mean I'm done yet.  I don't know what I'll do, but I'll do something.  And that's the best any of us can do.