What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? – Mark Manson
The days and hours looked almost exactly the same, enclosed in a small space that is our condo unit. Changing from work to relax mode just meant changing screens – from laptop to mobile phone to television. Doing anything is a struggle, but not doing anything is also a struggle. I chose to keep moving.
Almost every single day I’d work on my challenge for the month, an attempt to plant seeds of growth at a time where all we want to do is survive. We have always perceived surviving and thriving as if they are two levels, in which we need to survive first before we thrive. But I wonder if there is another framework we can operate in. I wonder if, perhaps, attempting to learn new things, working on personal projects, moving, reading, playing, making art and failing – all acts under the ‘thrive’ category – can actually help us survive?
I have gone from zero to one pull up this month. The difference between zero and one seems so small, and yet it was composed of countless grunts, mistakes, days of saying ‘I’m so fucking tired but yes, I’ll get on that bar’. In other words, the difference between zero and one is the struggle – the one that I chose. In hindsight, the fact that I can choose my struggles is a blessing in itself, and I am grateful for it.
Thank you July, for the privilege to choose my own struggles.