It is never easy to live the life, so they say. There is only one way to do it easy. It is only when we learn to find the ease right in the middle of the difficulties that we face.

Sofa ease is deceptive. Armchair ease is deceptive. Sofa and armchair can offer you ease only after your battles, after your hard work, after taking challenges.

Sofa and armchair ease can become a snare. They can make for you a confinement where you serve the whole lifetime of yours. It is too easy to give in to the temptation of staying on sofa when you need to stand up and get yourself out to the tracks of the real life. TV and other screens are the allies against you.

The less you use your brain, the less you are able to use it. The less you use your body, the less you are able to use it. Sofa and armchair, and TV aim to keep you from using your brain or body. They want to see you less and less able to use them. They want to see you dead.

Use it or lose it – that is an advice worth listening in.

We should learn, indeed, we all should learn to capture the peace that dwells in the storm.

One thing I learned from a sports coach. He said, it is easy to be in time, it gets difficult when you are late. It is easy to get up and make your bed. It gets difficult when your Mother sees it unmade and starts demanding. It is easy to run the distance when you can savor it, when you can find the strange joy that dwells in a competition, even when you compete only with your own self. But it can get terribly difficult if you do that like against your own will, because you want to live up to the expectations of others, or so.

There is a strange joy in not giving up when it gets difficult. There is a strange joy in going out for a run even if it rains or storms. There is a strange joy to put in effort in helping others. You may notice that it is not that often that others need your help. So it is important to seize every single one of them. To be helpful is highly rewarding.

The most rewarding are things that require to sacrifice something – your free time, the cleanness of your clothes, your comfort, your money… In return you get the strange joy that dwells in overcoming challenges. And that joy is a real thing. It is uplifting, it is healing.

Apart of that, when we get that sweet taste of the strange joy that dwells in the middle of storms, in overcoming difficulties, then we get an important “message” on how the life is to be lived. When we learn to savor and thrive on challenges and overcoming difficulties, we find sweetness in that. And that sweetness is what makes the life worth living.

The real life is the one on the thin edge where your dreams become reality, where your efforts get crowned with success, where you feel you have been strong and determined even when the rest of the world was against you.

There is a snare in every sofa or armchair. We fall into that snare when we stop using them as a place for rest and start using them as a shelter from life. With that, we give ourselves as slaves to the things that are made for us to be used by us. Those things become our masters when we give ourselves to them as slaves. We should never allow them to be our master. They are good as servants, but as masters they are dangerous. They have the potential of destroying us as personalities.

Each new day is a gift. Live it to its fullest. The time is short. Savor and accumulate the strange joy that dwells in challenges and difficulties.

Then, at the end of the day, your true servants, your sofa and your armchair will be ready to give you good rest.