Life is not easy. It isn’t supposed to be. Our culture sort of disagrees with this. Our mores tell us that a perfect life is one without struggle or strife, where there is no injustice or imbalance, where everyone is free to live out their life in peace.

This is what we’re supposed to believe, but what makes us think this is even a remotely reasonable belief? The very diversity of opinion and personality that we supposedly cherish ensures that there will never be perfect harmony. Some people will always be out of sync with others, and this will eventually lead to strife.

I’m thinking about this sort of thing quite a bit lately. I’ve just gotten over some of the largest challenges of my life. Things are still hard, and I’ve got plenty of things to address in my life, but I’m here. Most of my life is pretty smooth. I’m meeting and exceeding challenges I wouldn’t have thought likely a year ago.

But I recognize that I’m having some new challenges. The biggest one is perhaps one that we all face constantly. It’s the reconciliation of self. It’s acknowledging my own philosophy and trying to live in peace with that. Herbis Orbis mentioned a struggle with self-identified hypocrisy on Twitter the other day. I’ve encountered this often enough to know the discomfort that such a realization brings. I’ve been dealing with a lot of those rising challenges lately. Who am I really? Is my philosophy congruent with my lifestyle? Am I respecting the boundaries I expect others to respect? It’s painful to have a memory as strong as mine, one that quickly summons the examples of my missteps and failures. My teachers tell me that recognizing your failures and letting them instruct you is vital not only so I may grow, but also as a way of ensuring that our daemons can not harm us through our self-ignorance. I know it’s the truth, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

The Solstice is in a few days. I didn’t even realize how close it is. This Sunday. I feel some pressure building, maybe it’s been building for a while now. I think I need to plan for some alone time during the longest night (or maybe the night prior). The universe tells us what we need to know if we’re not too conceited to listen to it.

Ah, this has been a ramble, but there it is.