monroe

On work days arise to your labors happily, if you can. And if you can't, what's stopping you? Is there something heavy, something difficult in your way? What do you have against what's heavy and difficult? -That it can kill you?- Alright, so it's strong and powerful, you know that much about it. And what do you know about what's easy? Nothing. We have no memory at all of what's easy. So even if you were permitted to choose, wouldn't you choose what's hard? Don't you feel how kindred it is to you, related to you through all your loves? Is it not your true home?

And aren't you in harmony with nature when you choose it? Don't you think the seed would find it easier to stay in the earth? Don't the migrating birds have it hard, and the wild animals who have to fend for themselves?

Look: easy things and hard things simply do not exist. Life itself is what's hard. And you want to live, don't you? So you're wrong to call it your duty to take on what's hard. The survival instinct pushes you to do that. So what is your duty? Your duty is to love what's hard. That you carry the weight doesn't say much, you have to rock it in its cradle and sing it to sleep, and be there when it needs you, and it can need you at any moment.

You have to be so ready to help, so gentle and kind, that you spoil it, spoil your difficult thing like a child, so that it can no longer exist without you, so that it depends on you.

After you've brought it to such a state you will no longer want anyone to come take it off your hands.

And you get that far through love. To love is hard. When someone bids you to love, they are laying a great task upon you, but not an impossible one. For they are not calling you to love another person, which is not for beginners; they are not demanding from you that you love God, which only the most mature people can do. They are only calling your attention to what's hard for you, what is neediest in you and at the same time most fruitful. You see, what's easy wants nothing from you, but what's hard waits for you, and there is no strength in you that won't be needed there, and even if your life is very long not a single day will be left over for what's easy, what scoffs at your strength.

Go deep inside yourself and build what's hard. It should be like a house within you, if you yourself are like a land that changes with the tides. Remember, you are not a star, you have no course to follow.

You must be a world unto yourself, and with your difficult thing in the center, drawing you to it. And one day, with its weight, its gravity, it will have its effects beyond you, on a destiny, on a person, on God. Then, when its ready, God will enter into your difficult thing. And do you know anywhere else where you and He can meet?