MARCH 27 — Here’s one truth most of us are in denial about: life sucks. Every time you think you are getting ahead, every time you’re doing a little better, every time you’re feeling a little happier, something bad will happen. Life can screw you hard. 

So why does this happen? Life simply just can’t help it. The only constant in life is change, said a Greek philosopher who lived a very long time ago. Change happens because the world is continuously evolving, and because we live in it we are continuously evolving too.

How does change screw us? As we live our lives, we try to do things. And that causes our lives, and the lives of those around us, to change in one way or another. Change means we either go uphill or downhill from where we were.

When we try to do things, we either make it or we don’t. Unfortunately life can kick you in the teeth either way. An American author famously said somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone — either we are defeated by failure or we are unmade by success. 

Naturally we resist change, you and me, because our inertia wants us to stay unchanged. And this means change is usually painful. 

When we leap from something we know, something comfortable, something we can predict to something we know shit about, it scares the shit out of us. Because our mind, it’s scared of what it doesn’t know. 

And life screws with you and me whether we’re climbing the mountain or just finding happiness at the bottom. Even if all you want is to keep your life going with minimal change, something somewhere will happen to spoil that picture for you. Someone may even see you as an obstacle in their quest to go up the mountain. And step all over you as they walk up.

But that’s life — it happens. It marches on along a one-way street, never stopping, never slowing down. Life happens every single second with every single breath we take. Change happens, whether from what we do or what people around us do.

Scary, isn’t it? Life doesn’t care about fairness or any of that shit, only humans do. And we should, of course. But that’s beside the point — what screws you and me up isn’t life’s runaway train but what we do about it.

We’re screwed not because we feel fear but because we lose ourselves to that fear. What do I mean by that? I mean that time when life wants us to change and we tried so hard not to because we’re afraid. 

Naturally people resist change because our inertia wants us to stay unchanged, says the columnist. — Reuters pic

When you and I desperately wanted things to remain the same, unchanged, even though deep down we know things will not and cannot remain as they were anymore.

We’re screwed whenever we let our fear drive us. We’re screwed whenever we let our fear paralyse us. We’re screwed whenever we push back against life happening to us and around us. We’re screwed whenever we choose to paddle against the rushing rapids in our sad little canoe, futilely trying so hard to get back to where we were up the river when the reality is we can never go back.

But what I want to tell you is that it’s okay to be afraid. It’s okay to be angry or sad or depressed about how life screws you. It’s perfectly natural to worry, even a very tiny bit deep inside your heart of hearts, about what you don’t know. There’s probably something wrong with your head otherwise.

What’s not okay is giving up. You and I, we only get one shot at this game we play on earth. It’ll not a perfect ride, but it was never going to be anyway. So many see “Game Over” so young that we have no business asking for those words for ourselves prematurely.

The thing is, life doesn’t care about you. It screws you as it marches forward and what you do about being f****d is entirely up to you. Persevere or roll over in a shallow hole on the ground, but life still keeps happening. But the people you and I love and hold dear do care — the point is to keep at it for them, if not yourself.

So there. Life screws you, that’s something you and I can never do anything about. We’ll fall again and again until the day we die. It’s much easier to just accept this one truth.

But what we can do something about is how we take it. We can choose to keep on going come rain, shine or hail. We can choose to start climbing up the slope again every time we fall down the ravine. We can try and try, even if life keeps tripping us, because really perseverance is the one thing that life can’t screw with.

If nothing else, remember this: even the darkest night gives way to light. Good times don’t last forever, but neither do the bad times. March through the darkness and eventually you’ll see dawn. And when you do, the fact you didn’t roll over during the dark night and chose to keep going will be a sweetness to cherish. 

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.