Life is already hard enough. Why do we insist on making it harder?
There is something humbling about being human.
We arrive without choosing our beginning. Our lives are given to us, formed in ways we do not fully understand, and held within the limits of time.
From a Christian perspective, we begin with the love of God. We are created with purpose, given the capacity to love, to think, to choose, and to shape something of the lives entrusted to us.
We are given freedom.
Yet freedom has its boundaries. We can choose what to do, but we cannot always choose what follows. We can offer love, but we cannot determine how it will be received. We can make plans, but time does not promise us endless opportunities to fulfil them.
Even love, beautiful as it is, can become a burden when we place expectations upon it, when care becomes control, or when what we offer leaves another person feeling indebted.
Perhaps this is part of the work of becoming: learning to live within the limits of what we have been given without turning those limits into unnecessary complications.
Life has its genuine difficulties. There are losses we cannot prevent, questions we cannot answer, and circumstances we cannot change. But there are also complications we introduce ourselves.
The conversation we avoid. The apology we withhold. The decision we postpone. The burden we insist on carrying for another. The freedom we exercise without considering its consequences.
And sometimes, it is not what we do that complicates life, but what we refuse to do.
We have been given a life, a measure of time, the freedom to choose, and the responsibility to live with our choices.
Perhaps wisdom begins when we learn to recognise the difference between what life asks us to carry and what we have chosen to add.
Life may not always be simple. But we need not make it harder than it already is.
Nugget: We cannot choose every circumstance of our lives, but we can learn to stop creating unnecessary burdens within them.
