The Second Iteration

2011-05-13

It will not be long when you realize that you’re glad you kept them.

2011-01-06

Journey

“Life is a series of difficult problems”

This was the central theme and lesson of M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled, and fully embracing this lesson is perhaps the greatest challenge we face in our growth as individuals.

Life is a constant struggle. We fear uncertainty. We seek relief from pain. We avoid challenge when necessary. At the same time, we clutch hope. We root ourselves in faith. We do our best to arm ourselves with knowledge and courage.

There are times when we are forced to make difficult decisions, when we have no choice but to venture down a road of oppressive uncertainty, when we find ourselves impossibly alone, when we know that there is a 50-50 chance that a few inches to our left is the plunge of a figurative or literal thousand-foot cliff.

However overwhelmingly difficult these moments are, there will come a time—sooner than we think—that we will look back on these moments and realize that we have indeed overcome those difficulties, and may even be glad that we went through the experience, for it is through these experiences that we learn the most, that we discover ourselves the most.

At the same time, we should regard these experiences and what we have gained from them not with pride but with humility, for pride often leads to callousness and forgetfulness. We should keep in mind that we will only come through this way once. It is through humility that we nourish our own personal growth. It is through love that we extend ourselves to encourage the growth of those we are close to.

Ultimately, we will realize that once we fully recognize the fact that life is meant to be difficult, enduring and facing life’s challenges is no longer too difficult anymore.

2010-12-29

I think every relationship should be treated like a marriage. Don’t commit if you’re not serious. If you’re not in it for the long run, why do it at all? Why put the other in danger because you’re only thinking of the present. Marriage is just a relationship with a higher title. It should always be the same as a simple healthy relationship.

2010-11-02

But what is this force that pushes us as individuals and as a whole species to grow agains the natural resistance of our own lethargy? We have already labeled. It is love. Love was defined as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” When we grow, it is because we are working at it, and we are working at it because we love ourselves. It is through love that we elevate ourselves. And is through our love for others that we assist others to elevate themselves.

— The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, M.D.

2010-09-25

The tendency to avoid challenge is so omnipresent in human beings that it can properly be considered a characteristic of human nature. But calling it natural does not mean it is essential or beneficial or unchangeable behavior. It is also natural to defecate in our pants and never brush our teeth. Yet we teach ourselves to do the unnatural until the unnatural becomes itself second nature. Indeed, all self-discipline might be defined as teaching ourselves to do the unnatural. Another characteristic of human nature—perhaps the one that makes us most human—is our capacity to do the unnatural, to transcend and hence transform our own nature.

— The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, M.D.

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If one wants to climb mountains one must have a good base camp, a place where there are shelters and provisions, where one may receive nurture and rest before one ventures forth again to seek another summit. Successful mountain climbers know that they must spend at least as much time, if not more, in tending to their base camp as they actually do in climbing mountains, for their survival is dependent upon their seeing to it that their base camp is sturdily constructed and well stocked.

— The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, M.D.

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There is no confidence without competence, and there is no competence without discipline.

— James Pratt, Ed. D.

2010-09-24

To escape from the microcosm of our childhood experience, from the microcosm of our culture and its dogmas, from the half truths our parents told us, it is essential that we be skeptical about what we think we have learned to date. It is the scientific attitude that enables us to transform our personal experience of the microcosm into a personal experience of the macrocosm.

— The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, M.D.