The Illusion of Struggle

Everyone has a 'struggle' story...those difficult years when nothing was working right; we were young, restless and not so successful, and the world had not been conquered as yet; the people around were indifferent and at times not so kind...

Sounds familiar? Not surprising, since all of us, almost all of us have a similar story!

And most of us love remembering this story and recalling and retelling it with fondness, all our life. 

We hold on to this story and it goes with us to our graves.

Yet, many other happier and better times are not remembered with  so much effort ... 

Why?

The reason is very simple, yet intriguing. For most of us, our struggle defines us. They give meaning to our life and define our existence. They on one hand help us to self-pity  and also draw sympathy from our 'listeners'; on the other hand help us to show others how brave we have been, how we emerged from the 'ashes'. The impact is so 'romantic'.

This romanticism is something, most of us love and hence hold-on to our 'struggle years' story'. This becomes even more romantic when one makes it very big in public life. Then this story is the clincher and grabs headlines and prime-time media attention.

Everyone loves it!

However what most of us do not realize is that this story of struggle is an illusion and the more we drool over the same, the bigger & tougher it sounds. In reality everyone has to work towards something that one wants to achieve. The path is target dependent. Hence if one had no ambition, the path simply would not have been there. We chose the path, since we chose what we wanted to have in the first place. The path is unpredictable, since environmental variables keep altering. And most of us know or atleast can predict the obstacles on the way to  our goal.

In short, there is nothing like struggle.

I know, most of us will like to believe the contrary. That is understandable. After all we have grown on fairy tales, so why not have one of ours' :-)