No Struggle, No Progress

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

― Frederick Douglass

We start the new year with the guidance of ancestor Frederick Douglass. This quote is powerful. There is a fine line between our willingness to struggle, to change, to act- and the struggle that has exhausted many to the point that we burn out and give up.

There is a healthy boundary of struggle for as Douglass says, the crops, the skies, the seas, even the birth of a child, comes with some kind of struggle.

But how we do minimize the unnecessary suffering so we can engage in the struggle with clarity and commitment?