To live is to struggle. It is simply a matter of being wise enough to realise that not all struggles are equal or constant in their difficulties, costs or rewards.

Take breathing for example. Any human being knows that breathing is essential to continue living for even a few minutes longer. Under normal circumstances, a healthy human being will not feel any great struggle to breathe even while asleep. However, with enough afflictions from injury, disease or age, even something as basic and vital as breathing can become an agonising struggle for survival.

Therefore, the idea of living without struggle is nothing more than a tragic ideal that is as impossible to achieve as the idea of “true perfection”.

Instead, we should accept the reality that our lives will never be truly free of struggles and yet we can still make a choice about them. We can decide which victories are worth achieving even though there is a chance that our very best efforts will not be enough to overcome the struggles needed to achieve them. We can reject struggles that we think are not worth the risk to ourselves or to those whom we hold dear. We can prioritize our efforts and resources to deal with struggles that actually matter to us while ignoring struggles which are, in truth, insignificant at best.

Nothing of genuine value comes for free even if the costs of obtaining them is not always clear for all to see. That is why living and struggling is ultimately one and the same. That is why conflict, an expression of clashing individual struggles, is unavoidable.

Therefore, choose your struggles wisely, make every victory count, value what you have and accept that loss, much like death, is inevitable.