easy does it.

Life is hard. School is hard. Relationships are hard. Jobs are hard. It's all hard. You push and you push and you try and you triumph and you fall and you fail. It's so hard. It's like you are trying to walk up a mountain frozen over with ice, futile effort after futile effort, you push forward only to find yourself right back were you started. You take a deep breath.

And you try to live with ease.

I've been doing a lot of yoga lately. And while most of my friends who go with me don't subscribe to all the "nonsense spiritual stuff" that goes along with it, I have been listening. Really listening. And the main message: practice with ease. Live with ease. If you move into a pose and you start shaking and it's too hard, then breathe through it, take it back a notch, or just rest. Because if you cannot do it with ease, then it's not going to benefit you. You aren't going to get anything out of it, you aren't going to get any better. The struggle wins. If you get there and you cannot breathe and your mind is spinning, well, then it's like climbing up that icy mountain. And it's not worth it.

And it's not that life isn't worth it, because it totally is. But the pain isn't, the suffering isn't, the self-inflicted bs isn't. Don't let the struggle win. Let the struggle slip through your fingers and float away with the wind. Life is always going to be hard- but when you can learn to live with a little more ease, when you can breathe into the struggles and the pain, or rest when you start to shake: that's when you can finally find peace.

Because life is always going to be hard. There is always going to be suffering. But, you don't have to suffer. Learn to live with ease. You can walk around that mountain and still arrive on the other side, without a scratch or bruise. Rest when necessary and breathe through the pain and suffering. Find peace through the path of least resistance. Better yet, let that peace find you. 

Liv

So carry on, my dear
What is clear up in the daylight
Is we're hung here