I was at the thrift store the other day and picked up a book I wish I had read 40 years ago, when it was first published. Written by psychologist, M. Scott Peck, M.D., ‘The Road Less Traveled’ is, from the first page, packed with insights, truths, practical counsel that I would have benefited from those decades ago. I believe many are raised today or have come from homes similar to my own, where Mom was basically missing in my early childhood and then gone altogether, Dad doing his best was too exhausted when home to pay much attention to his children, who were therefore looked after by others (it seemed Dad was always trying to find a better caregiver) Caregivers really didn’t care and only looked forward to a paycheck. The circumstances that followed when Dad remarried, and us four still in preteens, were better but not ideal. We were ‘high maintenance’ because of the earlier trying years. Our step-Mom’s three also had struggled, but then what percentage of adults today were raised in the ideal home? For many in and outside the Church, an ideal home is currently out of reach.
So… some insights from the first chapter of this book, starting with the first section called ‘Discipline’; then subtitle ‘Problems and Pain’: Dr. Peck said, “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. (a footnote, bottom of the first page: *The first of the “Four Noble Truths” which Buddha taught was “Life is suffering.”… I’m sure early members and many since of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can relate! continuing…) “It is a great truth because once we really see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult—once we truly understand it—then life is no longer difficult..Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.
Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others. I know about this moaning because I have done my share.
Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them of solve them? Do we want to teach our children to solve them?
Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems.
What makes this life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one. Problems, depending upon their nature, evoke in us frustration or grief or sadness or loneliness or guilt or regret or anger or fear or anxiety or anguish or despair.These are uncomfortable feelings, often very uncomfortable, often as painful as any kind of physical pain, sometimes equaling the very worst kind of physical pain. Indeed, it is because of the pain that events or conflicts engender in us all that we call them problems. And since life poses an endless series of problems, life is always difficult and is full of pain as well as joy.
Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. When we desire to encourage the growth of the human spirit, we challenge and encourage the human capacity to solve problems, just as in school we deliberately set problems for our children to solve. It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Those things that hurt, instruct.” It is for this reason that wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems. ~ M. Scott Peck, M.D.’The Road Less Traveled’ (Touchstone Press p.15-16, 1978)
Outside of Dr. Peck’s statements above and his book those who would take seriously and apply the counsel of our Prophet, Apostles and leaders, have advantages on the Lord’s side incomparable to ‘worldly wisdom and rhetoric’. k
