What happens when I stop comparing my direction with others? I notice how persistent my measurement habit can be—the endless measurement of whether life has dealt me more challenges or fewer than those around me.

Could this comparison itself create a particular kind of challenge? I may even believe that others somehow navigate existence with greater ease and possess some secret method for avoiding what I cannot.

How strange that fortune remains so impermanent, yet I speak of it as if it were fixed. The “fortunate” person becoming unfortunate, the “unfortunate” becoming fortunate—these transitions occur so regularly that the categories do not make sense anymore.

For it won’t be long ’til I’m gonna need somebody to lean on…

What shifts when overwhelming experiences are seen through time’s lens? Those moments that once appeared unbearable now appear as mere episodes in a longer story. Perhaps they are not gone entirely but somehow transformed—their “magical power” diminished through the simple act of continuing to live.

The merge that comes not from pushing away but from embracing wholeheartedly—could this be what transforms my relationship to difficulty? It is not perfection but reasonableness, not the absence of being overwhelmed but its appropriate collection.

And certainty may become just another form of control, another fixed position in a world of movement. The very claim to have transcended grasping becomes its subtle grip.

Is there an idea between making life too tricky and too easy? Perhaps something that recognizes both the challenge and the immediacy, the effort and the naturalness. It could mean the willingness to engage completely without measuring, to act wholeheartedly without calculating difficulty or ease.

I, I will begin again!

My appointment with reality feels urgent and infinite—how do I meet it? I don’t hurry or slack, strive desperately, or abandon effort altogether.

Everyone might recognize the tendency to compare their toil with others and the possibility of meeting this moment directly without measurement. Everyone might know both the habit of making experience either impossibly hard or deceptively easy and the potential freedom in between.

You are always welcome.