Not so easy

In 2006 it was easy to get a mortgage for a house you really couldn’t afford. In 1999, it was easy to make money buying and selling dot com stocks. It’s easier to drive through at the fast food place and get a burger with supersize fries than it is to take a brisk walk around the park. It’s easy to go to bed without brushing your teeth. It’s easy to stand in the shadows and avoid getting involved.

It’s easy to push a button and send an email spam message to millions of people. It’s easy to make a quick judgment about someone you’ve never met, based on a 15-second sound bite. It’s easy to say, or tweet, or post on Facebook that you really, really care, and then do nothing.

So, what’s so great about easy? Easy makes it much more likely that you’ll do it, yet much less likely that it will bring you anything of value. Every now and then, something is easy and great. More often, though, the results of easy are decidedly mediocre.

But the thing is, easy sells. It makes great promises. Too bad it doesn’t deliver. Or, on second thought, maybe that’s not so bad.

Would we really want a world in which everything comes too easily? What if, for example, you could just snap your fingers and anything, and everything, would just appear? Instantly and with no effort, you could have things such as a huge home on your own private island, the finest automobiles and aircraft, the most incredible gourmet food and fine wine, beautiful jewels and clothing.

What would you still want? What would you hunger for, day and night? What would be the one thing you could not have, if you could instantly have anything you wished for, easily and with no effort?

Challenge.

Just think how empty life would be if you had no challenge. What would things be worth, if they required no effort? Most would be worth approximately nothing.

Ease is a gilded cage that locks you away from your best possibilities. Don’t let yourself become trapped by the desire to make life easy. Instead, keep yourself growing stronger, more capable and authentically fulfilled by your willingness to create real meaning and value.

You get what you pay for, and you get what you live for. Choose to get value. Choose to get meaning. Choose to get busy, and be wary of easy.