I am strong and fearless

I am currently looking for a job.  I want a great job.  With a great company.  In a great place.  With great people.  That will pay me lots of money so I can go visit my family often.  Good news - there are some jobs out there.  It's just writing a new cover letter for each job you apply to is so tiring!  I was getting a little discouraged yesterday.  This morning while I was eating my yogurt and granola, I picked up my BYU Humanities magazine and read the dean's message.  Read it here.  He talks about the pilgrim in Dante is on his hard journey out of Hell and how he wants to stop and rest.  The guide then tells him:

“‘Now must thou thus cast off all sloth,’ said the Master,
‘for sitting . . . down . . . none comes to fame. . . . Rise,
therefore, conquer thy panting with the soul, which conquers
in every battle if it sink not with its body’s weight.
There is a longer stair which must be climbed.’” “I rose
then,” the traveler tells us, “better furnished with breath
than I felt, and said: ‘Go, for I am strong and fearless.’ ”

He also talks about the Entitlement of easiness.  These days people feel entitled to an easy path.  If things don't come easily to you, then society wants you to think that you are not good at it.  So instead we steer awat from challenging things and move toward easy unearned excellence where the sense of acheivement often doesn't last long. 

“That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved.”

Press on!  Climb that hill!  If it's not hard, it's not worth doing!