because things are hard per se but because  they are harder - far harder - than we had  

ever expected them to be. It isn’t necessarily  difficulty that sinks us; it’s bad notions about  

what a noble task should legitimately demand. We operate with dangerously inadequate views of  

what it takes for anything good to happen:  of what it might take to have a moderately  

good relationship, to run a more or less  viable business, to have a circle of friends,  

to be healthy, to build a home or to achieve  balance of mind. We lose our tempers, cry and  

scream - because we perceive injustices where  there are in fact only encounters with entirely  

reasonable and predictable degrees of pain. A wiser society would include in every school  

curriculum a weekly class titled ‘Hell, your  future,’ which would systematically induct  

the young into the necessary degrees of suffering  required by any worthwhile life. We would realise  

that we make people strong not by enchanting them  with descriptions of a life of opportunities,  

but by being aptly honest about things tend to  go. It isn’t in any way either cute or kind to  

educate a young person for a world that doesn’t  exist. Thrice married couples would address the  

young on the complexities of love; cancer  survivors would deliver lessons on the  

preciousness of time; artists and entrepreneurs  would testify to the absurd yet vital sacrifices  

required to produce results that look easy. No  young person would be left under the slightest  

illusion that fulfilling moments demanded anything  other than torment - and would, as a result,  

be in a far better place to attain them one day. The wise keep going not because they are braver,  

but because they have learnt to be a lot better  prepared, by which we mean, a lot sadder. They  

know that defeats and humiliations are unavoidable  events, not freakish punishments.  

They wonder, at the close of every quiet day,  why not more has gone wrong. They succeed on  

the basis of fully expecting everything to  be just about as hard as it really will be.