It would be wonderful if it weren’t true. But it is: “Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way,” the philosopher and Nobel Prize winner Albert Schweitzer said, “but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more upon it.”
Not only did people have to march for civil rights, they had to fend off attack dogs and mobs and policemen’s batons. Great works of art not only struggled to find publishers or galleries, but were actively discouraged by the supposed experts and critics. Sure, successful entrepreneurs are handsomely rewarded for their success—but think of all the headless headaches they had to endure to get there. Doubters. Regulations. Ungrateful customers. Bad luck. Right now, people in the private and public sector are struggling to produce and distribute a life-saving vaccine and encountering all this and more.
To truly make it in this life, it’s not just enough to endure these difficulties. It requires something deeper, something more profound. Schweitzer said we need to cultivate “a strength which becomes clearer and stronger through its experience of such obstacles is the only strength that can conquer” the difficulties of life. In other words, we must become like the image of the fire that Marcus Aurelius invokes, the one that “makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.”
Because life—and other people—will roll and throw so much at us. Criticism. Doubts. Competition. Difficulties. Deceit. Obstacles take many forms, but inevitably they always appear. Sometimes in isolation, sometimes in a landslide. Sometimes in a landslide… in a pandemic.
Our only option is to take energy from this, to be made better by it. We must learn from the obstacles. We must take consolation in them (if it were easy then anyone could do it and the goal or good wouldn’t be worth pursuing). We must gather strength and muscle from each experience.
We have to remember: The obstacle is the way. Or rather, obstacles are the way.
P.S. This was originally sent on January 11, 2021. Sign up today for the Daily Stoic’s email and get our popular free 7-day course on Stoicism.
