Life is struggle. Exempt of negativity or positivity, the path that all lives travel down is that of struggle. Innately and completely. Accepting that path and everything you encounter along it, yet getting passed all those obstacles is struggle. Nothing is lost from struggle, but everything is gained.

Naturally, I feel that struggle generally associates with negative connotations. That struggle is suffering, though that is merely a common cultural association that is misplaced. Struggle is the effort it takes to move forward in life. To accept the way things are and move past them. Life is nothing but, and can be nothing but, struggle. Learning to recognize it as such, and accept for it being an omnipresent force in life allows for you to view it and react to it in the most productive, forward way. There is no denying, no dwelling, no pain. It is actually rather positive. By accepting it as the flow with which you travel, you can learn to navigate with it, and have it guide you where you need to go.

Each path is different and often what seems like difficulty often is not. Hours spent on a project to get it right, where nothing seemed to come simply together. Having claim bankruptcy after your first cafe isn't able to make ends meet. Losing loved ones to illness. That is all struggle and all is positive. It merely is a matter of perspective. Did the hours spent on the project lead to a better awareness of the process? Maybe learning a new skill-set? Losing the first business answer the questions that arose from a first time endeavour? Or that maybe the cafe was not what you were intended to be doing? Are the loved ones in a better place now? Is learning to leave them and celebrate them a key to living a better life? All a matter of perspective, but accepting those things, embracing them, and learning where to go next is key. Dwelling on them is not.

I want to embrace struggle and all that it entails. All the momentary misery, range of emotion, ecstatic moments. The good and bad friends. All I can learn from. All will help me move down that path, and hopefully towards being a 'better' person. The more struggle the better, and often times it seems like the people who have dealt with the most have come out the happiest. With the best appreciation for this moment of life we have. Those are who I look towards as example. I have seen people with literally nothing, everything taken from them and they have to fight to eat. And they smile. I have seen those who have seen their families slaughtered in front of their own eyes, and they smile. Smiling not of ignorance, but of wisdom.

I am not trying to fool myself here, but things are not worth dwelling on, and most often not worth being upset from. Often you have no control over things, and it is best to try and leave them be. Things will figure themselves out, they have to, and they will continue to follow their own path and I will follow mine.