Pain When Becoming More
To live is to grow, or at the very least aim toward growing. To exist, we survive. To become more, we answer a call.
The catalyst behind this growth remains immaterial. The inspiration for change matters only until the change begins. Whether a man becomes husband or father, knight or god, he makes a conscious decision to meet a demand beyond himself–beyond who he was before the demand was made of him.
This is brave. This is good. This is what is right.
If a man does not grow, he shrinks. Ignoring the call is not the same as unmaking it. There is no such thing as stagnation, as water to tread, as stable ground upon which a man might remain exactly the same as he has been. Momentum propels forward or hauls backward, and never does it settle. Rot and decay set in fast absent purpose, cannibalizing the soul when it thinks itself at glad rest.
To stave this off, we do more. We accept more burden, sacrifice more of ourselves to something. Paradoxically enough, we often emerge from it more whole than when we went in–forcing evolution upon ourselves, and qualifying for it only well after the fact.
As most things good and right go, the path challenges those who walk it. At times it can be a grueling crawl through shattered glass, a fever of panic and confusion, a low pit of bitterness and fear. The path lends no weight to fairness, and cares not whether sacrifice and suffering wield the same tongue.
Though why should we not be challenged? Why should we not struggle, and fail, and struggle once again? A thing easy to obtain cannot hold enough depth for worth, merit, or meaning.
Even when it proves painful, especially when it proves painful, we must aim to do better. We must aim to become more. To you, reader, I ask only this–keep punching up.
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