Everything worth having takes work. For someone who grew up feeling like everything worth doing came easily, this is a profound paradigm shift. Relationships, black belts (excellence at anything, really), dogs, babies, health, happiness, gratitude and joy. I've lived too much of my life as if one could throw hundreds of seeds into his or her backyard and watch a beautiful garden magically appear. Everything worth having takes effort.
At 31 I'm finally beginning to realize that the effort is worth it - not just for the "thing to be had," but because there is beauty and transformation in the effort itself. Work. This is not the opposite of happiness, but the turning of the knob that opens the door. I know this is true because of what I feel in my chest as I write it.
It's interesting that the first thing God did for humans in the Genesis 2 Judeo-Christian account of creation was to ask them to work and tend a garden - to cultivate the garden of paradise. Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of watering seeds in ourselves and those around us. The seeds of love, joy, and happiness. This really is the project of life. When I was young, my father told me that if we could find a pet that didn't eat, drink, or go to the bathroom, we could buy a pet. My response [elated]: "MOM, DAD SAYS WE CAN GET A PET!!!" - unaware that all things worth having also require effort. There is no dog worth loving that does not also crap. There is no baby who does not cry.
As a professor in acupuncture school once told me, God never closed the gates to paradise; God simply put a fiery angel with a sword to block the entrance, which means any one of us can walk straight back into paradise. We just have to be willing to walk through fire to get there. And once we get there, there is still a garden to tend - one day, one breath, at a time.
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