Difficulties

“Every aspect of tragedy must be the bones 

supporting the rest of life, 

What I cling to…is the belief that difficulties are what makes it honorable and interesting to be alive.”

                                                                                  Florida Scott-Maxwell (84)

                                                                                       FromThe Measure Of My Days (published in1968)

“Hold to what is difficult”— Rainer Marie Rilke

It was the words of Rilke, “Hold to what is difficult,” that jumped off the page, and started an avalanche in my being. There was some kind of mysterious cascading sensation that made me buy that book, in that unknown bookstore, on that day. I didn’t know it at the time, but that moment presaged my luck.

At the time, I knew I was taken by Rilke’s words, I thought of them primarily as good advice from someone far smarter than I. Little did I know that those words were prophetic, referring to my coming life, and the most incredible form of grace that comes into all of our human lives.

I am rendered almost speechless by the elegant democracy of hardship. It enters even the most successful person’s life, there is no privilege that is capable of forestalling tragedy, suffering and difficulty. All of us are in that particular crucible. It is the difficult degree of challenge that brings out the incredible humanity that is available within us.

I’m not just tooting my own disabled horn here. Life seems to have devised a devilishly effective means for evoking our potential. It starts with what appears tragic, and calls for the response that turns pain and insecurity into Creation. There is a kind of alchemy here that goes way beyond human intention to something mysterious, dark, and grossly compelling. What hurts and overwhelms is what teaches and creates best. My soul didn’t see that coming, or perhaps it did, the avalanche started somewhere.

Now I consider myself “Lucky” not because I no longer am in the hands of difficulty, but because difficulty seems to have a permanent grip on me. Being disabled is horribly edifying. Weirdly, perhaps dementedly (I am 70 after all), I now consider the “good life” to be the one hardship has wrought. Wisdom doesn’t come with long life, I now think, it comes with a blessedly difficult one. 

Nothing seems to sensitize us as well as genuinely difficult initiatory ordeals. These are the painfully dubious experiences no shaman can evoke, and no workshop, or lifelong practice can prepare us for. It is the natural hardship of existence, the difficulty of being truly human, that draws out of each of us our true character. One cannot fake pleasure and equanimity in the face of the natural workings of hardship and difficulty. Grace is wickedly accurate.

You don’t have to go looking for difficulty. There is no practice for becoming. Life handles it. Spiritual aspirations don’t provide immunity. One cannot hope lightening will fall on your head.  Difficulty comes in its own way, uniquely suitable for each of us. 

Then we have only our response.  The world smiles when hardship makes us the strangely receptive beings we can be.