Passion, Experience & Growth

The Burden Of Responsibility

July 16, 2021

As I have said before, I have taught my children over and over again, “You can learn the easy way, or the hard way.”—that was the context of my offer of instruction that would help them avoid the hard lessons.

But as they grew, I recognized the need for a change—there were some lessons that were impossible for me to teach deeply: most importantly, the nature of love, attachment, loss, and letting go.

I also recognized the need for a new message: “easy is not better, it is just easy.” In 2011, I emphasized for Nick—and myself—that “effort yields results.”

In his book, Beyond Order, Jordan B. Peterson states the challenge even more definitively:

What calls you out into the world, to your destiny, is not ease. It is struggle and strife, it is bitter contention and the deadly play of the opposites. It is probable—inevitable—that the adventure of your life will frustrate, and disappoint, and unsettle you as you heed the call of conscience and shoulder your responsibility and endeavor to set yourself and the world right. But that is where the deep meaning that orients you and shelters you is to be found. That is where things will line up for you, where things that have been scattered apart and broken will come together, where purpose will manifest itself, where what is proper and good will be supported, and what is weak and resentful and arrogant and destructive will be defeated. That is where the life that is worth living is to be eternally found, and where you can find it, personally, if only you are willing.

Effort yields results, but faith yields life—the complete form of the tattoo I proposed for Nick that year, a reminder that discipline and trust are not opposites, but partners in becoming whole.

Faith will come later—in chapter 8. But before we reach it, there is work to do. We must pass through effort, through struggle, through the burden of responsibility itself. Only then will we be ready for what waits beyond.