The Myth of Easy — The Myths Series

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The Myth of Easy — We have fun­ny beliefs, and one of them is that we “ought to be” com­fort­able, and life ought to be easy. This tends to mean that we think oth­ers ought to move heav­en and earth so that we are. Not so!

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We only have to go back to the Depression and the generation after — up to and including World War II — to find the opposite of the Myth of Easy.

People prior to the end of WWII would have told you quite clearly that:

• life is hard,
• there will be struggles,
• that sim­ple sur­vival was what life was all about,
• when tragedy struck, fam­i­lies ral­lied, and life went on.

Today, the Myth of Easy says that:

• noth­ing should be painful.
• There should be no lessons, oth­er than easy ones.
• School should not make demands.
• Work should not expect excellence.
• Oth­ers (peo­ple we are in rela­tion­ship with) should put us first.

For exam­ple:

• God for­bid we give lit­tle Suzie the grade she deserves, or hold her back because she blew 9th grade.
• Nev­er mind that she was pop­ping pills and drinking.
• Nev­er mind that she was hang­ing around with a group of losers.
• Nev­er mind that when some­thing went wrong, lit­tle Susie always blamed oth­ers: her fail­ure was the fault of the teach­ers, the school system.

No, pass her. Lest her pre­cious lit­tle ego be damaged.

And then it’s 5 years lat­er, and a pro­fes­sor at Uni­ver­si­ty or a boss makes a demand for work, and lit­tle Susie flips. “No one told me it was like this!”

We of the 50s and later grew up under the “Myth of Easy,” “Security” and ““Having it Better than Mom and Dad.”

Remem­ber annu­al rais­es? We got them because that’s what hap­pened each year, not because of per­for­mance. Rais­es were our right, remem­ber? And peo­ple whine because now rais­es might be tied to per­for­mance or some actu­al stan­dard.

Per­son­al growth was the buzz­word of the 60’s. It, too, was to be easy and quick. One est week­end here, one colonic there, a chant and a mantra… and every­thing would be bet­ter.

If any­one sug­gest­ed that enlight­en­ment comes in fits and starts, after much effort and with painful, con­tin­ued dif­fi­cul­ties, the Cult of Easy said, “If I give you more mon­ey, can you speed up the process?”

So, now, in this seem­ing­ly end­less “era of Trump” and the 1%, many are cocooned in their Lazy Boys, hop­ing that the pain will stop. They declare, “It was­n’t sup­posed to be this way.” 

And then they go out and yell at peo­ple they deem to be “ille­gals.”

Well, baloney. As Scott Peck remind­ed us in The Road Less Trav­eled, “life is difficult.” 

Learn­ing, shift­ing behav­iour, heal­ing, all come at a price. No learn­ing hap­pens with­out pain.

The pain may be noth­ing more than the pain of hav­ing to give some­thing — some behav­iour — up, or it may be a “shak­en to the foun­da­tions” type of pain, but it is a nec­es­sary com­po­nent of growth.

The Cult of Easy has nothing to do with wholeness. It has to do with resisting — denying — that life is about hard, hard work.

Of course, we all wish it were dif­fer­ent, and all that wish­ing means that most peo­ple are stuck in one of the fol­low­ing “easy — com­fort” loops.

Being Content vs. Being Right

Many folk want to be declared right. They want oth­ers to agree with their point of view. They see their mis­sion as chang­ing others. 

This is a com­fort­able place, as it nev­er involves self-reflec­tion. It sim­ply involves judg­ing oth­ers and find­ing them lacking.

This is oth­er­wise known as the blame game.

A min­is­ter once had a man in his con­gre­ga­tion who was absolute­ly messed up. His behav­iour was atrocious. 

Final­ly, the min­is­ter decid­ed to preach about this man. 

She start­ed off sub­tly, mak­ing allu­sions to the aber­rant behav­iour. Each week the man would walk up to the min­is­ter, shake her hand, and say, “That’s telling them, preacher!”

This went on week after week.

Final­ly, there was a snow­storm, and the only two peo­ple in church were the min­is­ter and this man. She decid­ed to go for broke. She preached right at the man. Spelled it all out. 

End of the ser­vice, she’s at the door. The man walks up, look­ing real sad, Grasps the min­is­ter’s hand. Says, “That’s telling them, preach­er. If only they’d been here!”

Being Con­tent — con­tent­ment — is inverse­ly pro­por­tion­al to judg­ing. The more you judge oth­ers and try to change oth­ers, the less con­tent you are. The wise per­son learns that the first and great­est dis­ci­pline is to focus on sim­ply observ­ing oth­ers, rather than try­ing to change them.

Manipulating others into changing

This one is a sec­ond cousin to the first. It goes, “If oth­ers would change, then I could be hap­py.” It’s dif­fer­ent from the first in this way. 

The per­son does not tell the oth­er per­son how to act from a posi­tion of supe­ri­or­i­ty. The per­son wants oth­ers to change from a posi­tion of “one down.”

“If only you would see the pain you are caus­ing in me. If you real­ly loved me, you would change.”

Peo­ple think this way because we want oth­ers to do all the work. That way, we can keep doing all sorts of sil­ly stuff, and the oth­er per­son lets us.

I had a cou­ple for clients. He worked evenings, she worked days, and they had a one year old. She expect­ed three things of him:

1. That he do the laun­dry, every day.
2. That he vac­u­um the rugs, every day.
3. That he pol­ish the kitchen taps and sink, after every use.

She declared that these were the rules she’d learned, and if he loved her, he’d do these things for her. Of course, there were always oth­er items on the list; items that changed. And he was expect­ed to watch their son.

I worked with her for some weeks, try­ing to help her to see that per­haps such rules were not graven in stone. She refused to budge. Final­ly, the hus­band agreed to do the three things, plus the rest of his tasks. He fig­ured it was bet­ter than fighting.

What turned out to be our last ses­sion hap­pened like this: He walked in. He was sick. Had been, all week. He announced that he had been too sick on Mon­day to do his jobs, but she’d for­giv­en him. He’d crawled out of bed on Tues­day, and done every­thing. Today, Wednes­day, he’d man­aged to vac­u­um and do the laundry.

She walked in, glared at both of us, said; “I went home ahead of our ses­sion. You will­ful­ly neglect­ed the taps and sink. The mar­riage is over.” And so it was.

We want to blame oth­ers for our dis­tress. It is easy to blame, hard­er to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the things that are hap­pen­ing in our lives. 

Because of the Cult of Easy, we think oth­ers should have our best inter­est in mind. It is quite a shock to dis­cov­er they don’t. Many peo­ple “solve” this prob­lem by chang­ing peo­ple. The brave few sim­ply rec­og­nize that whole­ness is not about get­ting oth­ers to behave themselves.

“I’m No Good!”

Anoth­er vari­ant. I had a client who would burst into tears and say, “It’s all my fault. I’m not a good per­son. I’m to blame.” 

This is not as bad as it seems, as at least she was using the right pro­noun. It is, how­ev­er, a com­fort-zone technique.

Feel­ing bad about one­self gets to be a habit, just like every­thing else. It requires no effort, because peo­ple who use such lines sel­dom con­clude with — “and so here is what I am going to do differently.”

This tech­nique allows you to sit back, tell your­self off, feel bad, sulk, maybe get some atten­tion from those around you, and not have to change a thing.

As opposed to the truth of whole­ness. “You are respon­si­ble for your life, and only you can change the way you see life, respond to oth­ers and treat your self.” You are “response able” — able to respond.

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