By Lukas Reyes | Reporter
“Life sucks, and then you die.”
My high school cross country coach used to say this to us when we would complain to him about a run. It’s a harsh, dismissive and somewhat funny thing to say to people who willingly run between 45 and 60 miles a week. It’s also true. This has served as a reminder in the last seven years of my life that, yes, things may suck right now, but life has been difficult before and will likely be difficult again in the future, assuming I don’t die first.
When life is tough, you can’t just stop living. You don’t live only when things are good. You have to keep moving forward when life sucks, or you won’t truly live at all before you die.
There is power in the acknowledgement of difficult things. To be able to say, “This is hard” or “That sucked” allows a person to ground themselves in the reality of their situation. Telling yourself that life sucks forces you to recognize your circumstances and then subsequently dismiss them by summing them up with the rest of life.
At some point in history, I feel like we began telling ourselves that life shouldn’t be hard. But the human story is one of constant struggle for people in all walks of life. Few individuals, if any, have ever reached a state of life where things never suck. Periods of time may prove to be the exception, but the majority of life requires work and struggle. That’s what life is about. Our existence is intertwined with adversity, but hardships provide the framework for growth.
When life sucks, it is a sign to put our heads down and work to make the improvements necessary to alleviate our situation. The acceptance that life sucks means that we place ourselves on a path to search for answers to a better life or state of being. If we don’t keep moving forward, we let our circumstances win and accept defeat.
Struggle is a requirement for growth, and the value of an improvement is oftentimes directly associated with the amount of struggle required to achieve it. Our trials and tribulations are opportunities to grow as people — or at the very least, prove to ourselves that we are greater than our setbacks. Your life is not defined by how much things suck, but rather by your response to them and what you learn from them as a result.
So, perhaps it is necessary to expand upon the saying. A better way to think about it might be, “Life sucks, and then you die. So, what are you going to do about it?”
Knowing this doesn’t magically solve your problems, and it certainly doesn’t make life any easier. The struggles you face will be present regardless of this knowledge. But “life sucks, and then you die” can serve as a reminder that you’ve been here before, you will be here again, and, despite that, you’re still standing. You can’t get so wrapped up in your suffering that you stop pushing and living life. It’s about what steps you take to make it better and about living life in a way that keeps you moving in the right direction. So, march on.
