Encouraging the Struggle

I recently heard a story from a friend about his grandmother. She is a WWII refugee from Eastern Europe, who had known a lot of struggle in her early life. Now, she was old and living comfortably in the United States as she had been for more than 60 years. A friend of hers recently developed Alzheimer’s, which I think we can all agree is a horrible disease that is incredibly difficult on the family and friends of the victim. But when that friend’s wife complained about how difficult the illness was to deal with, that little old refugee responded to her with a blank stare, saying, “I don’t get it. You are warm. You have a home. You have clothes to wear and food to eat…what is so hard?”

To me, that story is illustrative of how strong that WWII generation truly is and was. That was the last generation that knew struggle on a large and impactful scale. Plenty of generations have known personal struggle since, but the men and women of the ‘30s and ‘40s survived one of the most devastating global events in recorded history, and experienced it collectively. It made them tough. Before the turn of the 19th century, America was a little brother nation. It was large and growing, but it hadn’t yet proven itself on the world stage. The two World Wars turned us in to a superpower. That is how we still think of ourselves today, and that was done on the backs of some truly great Americans.

When I look around today, I can’t help but see complacency. I hardly ever hear stories like the one above. Today, everyone jumps on the pity train for people experiencing struggle instead of reminding them how good they already have it, and that the struggles they face actually define who they become. I am starting to feel like complaints become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we keep focusing on what ails us, then we deny ourselves the opportunity to overcome. We are moving away from doing the hard things that made us great. There seems to be an expectation that someone else will come and do the hard work for us, and I would like to challenge that expectation.

I have mentioned before how I would like to stigmatize non-productive behaviors like laziness and bigotry. The other half of that is to start systemically working towards offering people opportunities rather than handouts. It is incredibly difficult for people to pull themselves out of poverty. As a society, we need to commit to opening more doors, and encouraging people to work hard in order to walk through them. There are 65,000 homeless people in Los Angeles. Instead of building more shelters and providing more meals, why don’t we create more opportunities?  We cannot be afraid of struggling. Struggling is what historically made us great. We cannot rest on our laurels and command the same respect that we once did.

Struggle is ok. Struggle should actually be encouraged. Struggle is what defines us. We cannot shy away from who we are.