The first of Richard Rohr’s Five Messages for Men is: Life is hard. The first of Buddha’s Four Noble Truths is: Life is suffering. The first sentence in Scott Peck’s bestselling “A Road Less Travelled” is: Life is difficult. So then: Loving life is welcoming what comes.
We’ve endured difficulties. There’s more to come. Life is hard. That’s a fact.
In light of the first of the Four Noble Truths (Life is suffering), shouldn’t birth be swaddled in sorrow and death elicit a sober joy?
Death is the opposite of birth, not Life. Life has no opposite.
It would appear that Life has a design flaw: Bad things happen. But what if this is not a flaw but simply how Life is set up to be?
Buddha: Life is hard.
Alone is bespoken, an existential fact. Lonely is a loose and promiscuous fiction.
Men's Work 