The book that most influenced me when I was a lad was The Road Less Traveled<\/i>, by M. Scott Peck. I probably read it four times between ages 15 and 22. When the Book of the Month Club surveyed its members for the most influential book they’d ever read, it ranked number 3. (The bible and Atlas Shrugged<\/i> were 1 and 2.) Several years ago a stake president in Sandy, Utah, challenged his whole stake to read it. <\/p>\n
Over the coming weeks I will post some selections to discuss. Today I’ll start with the famous opening. <\/p>\n
Life is difficult.<\/p>\n
This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult — once we truly understand and accept it — then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.<\/p>\n
Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should<\/i> be easy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The book that most influenced me when I was a lad was The Road Less Traveled, by M. Scott Peck. I probably read it four times between ages 15 and 22. When the Book of the Month Club surveyed its members for the most influential book they’d ever read, it ranked number 3. (The bible and Atlas Shrugged were 1 and 2.) Several years ago a stake president in Sandy, Utah, challenged his whole stake to read it. Over the coming weeks I will post some selections to discuss. Today I’ll start with the famous opening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}