"Learn to suffer"

I've rediscovered an old friend that I had neglected for a very long time. Physical suffering. Now I don't mean strict masochism in the sense of pain for pain's sake. But rather punishing oneself. Burning oneself in the fire so that only what is divine in mankind is left. My time in the gym over the past few months has been half-ass attempts to destroy the doritos and soda in my system. I've become soft physically and as a result I have softened mentally. My attitude towards this has changed overnight. Discipline in all areas of my life is coming on in stages.

Life is not easy. And if you find it easy, maybe you aren't trying. It's about suffering and joy, sorrow and happiness, struggle and triumph, blindness and finally seeing, fear and love. Our fortune, as human beings, is that we have the resources within us to make what we want out of this. We can transmute pain into wisdom, we can take sorrow and turn it into beauty. We can throw off the shackles of our parents or our hometowns or other's expectations of us and live. This life, being the only thing we have, is ours and ours alone. We are responsible for its failings and its victories. And when we want a thing, it is our action alone that will get it.

This doesn't require anything special of us. It does not require that we are born particularly gifted, because talent alone does not get results. It only requires that we try. And that we try even harder when things become difficult.