The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

July 9Learn to Struggle

If I wished to see a mountain or other scenery under the most favorable auspices, I would go to it in foul weather, so as to be there when it cleared up; we are then in the most suitable mood, and nature is most fresh and inspiring. There is no serenity so fair as that which is just established in a tearful eye.

Henry David Thoreau—The Maine Woods (1864)

There's a lyric in Bob Dylan's “Brownsville Girl” that adds color to this idea: “Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than people who are most content.”

This isn't an invitation to struggle, but you're going to. Suffer and learn how to become stronger from it. Then when the storms move away, take in the petrichor—the smell in the air around the time when rain falls on dry, stony ground (the word is derived from the Greek petra, meaning stone, and ichor, which is the divine fluid, the blood of the gods).

Sounds kind of fun when you look at it that way.

Challenge Question

1. Who do you want to be right now?