Most people would say that life is tremendously hard. That it consists of hardship, suffering, and uncertainty.
But the truth is that we make it hard.
We choose what we feel obliged to do.
We choose what to cling to.
We choose what we consider hard.
It might not feel that way, but look at the evidence.
Each society, each culture, each person has a different view of what makes life difficult.
Some cultures mourn death, some celebrate it. Some people draw strength from suffering, while others are crushed by it. Anything and everything is up for interpretation. One person’s tragedy is another’s test of strength.
Nothing is objective.
Life is simply not designed that way.
Yet many reject this outright.
Because facing this truth means taking full responsibility for your entire reality. How you feel, what you think, what you do. Every thought, feeling, and action is yours to own.
No bad luck.
No excuses.
This reality is too raw for most to stomach. They want their familiar suffering, their old excuses. They are too comforting to let go. They make everything easy, because they strip you of responsibility.
When you can blame something else, you can say one thing and do another. You can drift. You can hide behind chance, circumstances, and other people.
Your suffering becomes your cocoon.
And most never break that cocoon.
It’s not easy to do so.
Because from the moment you were born, everything you were taught has been obligation. Obligation disguised as virtue. Obligation disguised as morality.
It’s social programming at its finest.
You learn that you’re supposed to be a certain way. That you should please others and put yourself last. That you’re supposed to want certain things, to chase certain ideals, to live up to invisible expectations that no one ever stops to question.
Most people never stop to ask what they actually want. They simply don’t know how. They’ve been trained to pursue the goals others have placed in front of them — parents, peers, governments, religions, schools.
These expectations often sound noble, but chasing them is just another form of self-centeredness.
Because when you live like this, you’re always thinking about yourself. Always evaluating, comparing, adjusting, apologizing, strategizing. Trying to fit into a mold that was never meant for you.
You become obsessed with becoming “better” only in the ways the world has told you to.
And the cruel trick is this: you can never fit into a role you didn’t choose yourself.
That path leads to a lifetime of quiet suffering — of living out someone else’s idea of what a “good life” should look like.
Maybe that’s all you want.
So be it.
But don’t mistake that path for the only one.
It is possible to live genuinely.
To live by your own definitions of right and wrong. To move through life without constantly asking for permission. To pursue what truly calls to you.
But it requires something few are willing to do. A ruthless removal of the all-pleasing, ever-confused version of yourself that society has built.
You have to burn that version down.
Not improve it.
Not polish it.
Destroy it.
You cannot live freely if you’re still trying to impress ghosts. You cannot walk your own path if you keep glancing over your shoulder to see who approves.
Freedom doesn’t come from rebellion.
It comes from indifference.
The moment you stop caring what others think, you begin to see how easy life actually is.
Hardship still happens, yes.
But it’s not the same.
Pain becomes clean.
Fear becomes quiet.
You stop resisting what is.
You stop blaming, stop explaining, stop asking why.
And suddenly, life loses its weight.
You move with what happens instead of fighting it. You see clearly that most difficulty was self-made. Born out of attachment and expectation.
That’s what makes life easy: not the absence of pain, but the absence of resistance.
Most never get there.
Because it demands complete honesty.
It demands the death of everything false.
But if you ever dare to face it, you’ll realize something simple:
Life was never hard.
You just made it that way.
You begin to see that peace was never something to chase. It was what remained once the noise was gone.
You start noticing how the world moves without your control, and how little control you ever needed.
The irony is that once you stop trying to fix life, it starts to fix itself. Not because something magical happens, but because you finally step out of the way.
You no longer live for appearances.
You no longer confuse comfort with truth.
You no longer measure your worth through the reactions of others.
You live simply.
Quietly.
Honestly.
And that’s when life begins to feel effortless.
You see that effort is not the problem.
Struggle is. When your actions are aligned with truth, effort becomes light. When they aren’t, even the smallest task feels unbearable.
The hardest lives are lived by those who pretend.
Pretending to care.
Pretending to fit.
Pretending to know.
They spend decades performing roles they secretly despise. And all the while, they say life is hard.
But life was never hard.
Only falsehood is.
Sincerely,
Milo Morrison