“If you’re grateful for your life, you have to be grateful for all of it.” – Stephen Colbert on All There Is With Anderson Cooper
For each of us, life has been, is, or will be, a lot
Life is a lot. Sometimes the “a lot” comes in one-offs and sometimes it comes in deluges. Sometimes it comes in a rough day and sometimes it comes in long seasons of struggle. The one thing we can count on is that at one point or another, for each of us, life has been, is, or will be a lot.
I hope you’ll hang in here with me for another few minutes, because this essay is not meant to be a storm cloud on your blue-sky day. Yes, life is a lot. And, even so, life is beautiful and wonderful and priceless and not to be missed. We don’t need to ignore the “a lot” parts to enjoy the “good” stuff. In fact, the opposite is true. If we shove the “a lot” parts of life away, we are choosing a shallow and fictitious facsimile of life.
It’s a conundrum that while none of us would choose the moments when life is “a lot,” these same moments are often the times that end up being the most transformative. While we would never choose the hard times, after it’s all said and done, we are left oddly grateful for how they have changed us. Spiritual teachers call this the fullness of life.
Struggle is a part of the human journey
In The Yoga Sutras, Patanjali is very matter of fact that every one of us will struggle and face obstacles. In just three verses, he lists nine of obstacles, four physical symptoms of these obstacles, and offers an antidote to all this suffering.[1] Whether or not Patanjali’s list perfectly captures that which is feeling like “a lot” in your life, or the ways your struggles are showing up in your body, his proposed solution points us in the same direction that religious teachers do: God. Patanjali promises that God is in it all – even the most “a lot” parts of it – with us.
Patanjali’s antidote to suffering has nothing to do with ignoring or pushing our struggles to the margins of our lives. In fact, he is inviting us to engage deeply with the fullness of life. Diving into whatever is going on and seeking God there. The father of the branch of yoga I’ve studied the most deeply, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, was famous for saying, “Yoga is looking for God.” I believe this was his way of paraphrasing Patanjali’s promise.
Even when life is “a lot” it is full of promise
Later in his Sutras, Patanjali provides another beacon of hope for those of us navigating “a lot.” In chapter two, verse 18[i], he assures us that all of life is FOR US. Life, even when it feels like a desert, is an incubator designed to help us grow, develop, and transform into the people we most hope to be.
Richard Rohr, another of my teachers, shares this same message beautifully in the daily meditation from his Center for Action and Contemplation on April 23,2025:
God uses the very thing that would normally destroy us – the tragic, the sorrowful, the painful, the unjust deaths that lead us all to the bottom of our lives – to transform us. There it is in one sentence. Are we prepared to trust that? … there’s a different way to live with our pain, our sadness, and our suffering. We can say, “Woe is me,” and feel sorry for ourselves, or we can say, “God is even in this.” … We’re finally indestructible when we recognize that the thing which could destroy us is the very thing that could enlighten us.
Once you’ve experienced glimmers of transformation that have come directly from your own struggles with life’s “a-lot-ness” or read or listened to someone else’s experiences, this is easier to remember. This is why I share my stories. I imagine it is the reason for Anderson Cooper’s podcast and Stephen Colbert’s willingness to share his story on it.
Sharing stories of struggle and loss helps us connect to one another through the most universal of all human experiences – life and its “a-lot-ness” or fullness. These shared stories can help us to see a truth that can flicker out of focus when we’re lost in our own mess: life – all of it – is gift.
The fullness of life
Yes, life is a lot. We are going to face unexpected obstacles on our journey. We are going to struggle. We will struggle better if we can accept the truth shared by teachers for millennia: our obstacles and struggles are not pushing us off the path – they ARE the path. They are not distracting us from life, they ARE life. They will not destroy us, but, if we allow them to, they could enlighten us.
If life is a lot for you right now, I hope these words help. If you’re having a “blue-sky day,” I hope you can tuck this message away so that you might feel nurtured when the clouds inevitably come. Because just as we know that clouds will come, we can also trust that blue sky will return. This is the fullness of life.
[1] YS 1.30 Disease, languor, doubt, escapism, laziness, worldliness, an inflated sense of achievement, backsliding, and instability will distract us. YS 1.31 Suffering, depression, nervousness, and irregular breathing are the accompanying symptoms of our distraction. YS 1.32 But these can be eliminated if we practice bringing our mind back to focus on the one element at the source of all things.
[i] YS 2.18 Experience of the manifest world, which is a fancy way of saying life – ALL OF LIFE – has for its purpose providing each of us with the means for self-experience, spiritual evolution, and liberation.