Lessons from the Gulags – Part 1

4 Comments

Introduction

Apart from books on theology and Christianity, no book has had a bigger impact on me than The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The author was a decorated soldier in the Russian army who was later sentenced to eight years of hard labour in the Russian gulags. His great life’s work, The Gulag Archipelago, documents the atrocities of Communist doctrine applied to the people of Russia. His three-volume work brought the Soviet Union to its knees and made the label communist a slur among all reasonable people.

Read More

Getting off the Hard Road

Recently we discussed the somewhat paradoxical truth that easy choices lead to harder paths and hard choices lead to easier paths. This seems to be a general truth for life. We see it in parenting, we see it in personal finances and even in social skills.

Two Examples of Easy Choices and Hard Roads

Let’s consider students. Being diligent and spending an hour or two studying each day is certainly a hard choice to make. It would be much easier to play PlayStation every night. However, a diligent student generally ends up having more interesting choices of career and has developed the character traits which enable him to succeed in his career. On the other hand, the lazy student does not learn these things and as a consequence, is less likely to find work that he enjoys, and will often find himself working far harder than he would like for less reward.

Next, consider a single woman in her early twenties. She longs to have children one day, and she hopes to be able to be a great mum, and for her staying home with her children before school is very important. Let’s say that she’s gone to university. The hard choice is to be frugal and try to pay off student debt as soon as possible. If she chooses not to do this, she may end up with a big student loan. Failure to develop frugal habits in youth makes these habits more difficult to choose once her income stream is larger, and her big OE or a new car, and entertainment choices may mean she lives with very little in savings. Imagine she meets a young man who has had a similar approach in his early twenties. They get married and have a combined debt which if in the black would be well on the way to being a deposit on a house. Instead they now rent. Having developed poor discipline because they have always made easy choices, they continue to spend up to their income and sometimes above it. Their pay goes up, but so does their expenditure, and the rent. The easy choice to spend and live up in their twenties will cause life to be a whole lot harder in their 30s and 40s. The choices now available to our young woman are limited, and hard. She is unlikely to be able to enjoy the God-given gift of motherhood but instead will be frazzled trying to make ends meet and struggle to do justice to either her work or her family and children.

We could consider many other illustrations of this general principle. Easy choices made over time create hard paths. Difficult choices regularly chosen create character and lead to easier paths.

Reacting to the Hard Road

One of the things I have noticed is the unfortunate tendency of those on a hard road to fail to recognise the easy choices they have made that have placed them on the hard road. Despite hindsight being a wonderful thing, far too few of us experience its wonders! Instead, we tend to blame circumstances or other people for our ‘misfortune’. This is human nature. When I ram my toe on the corner of the bed, my human tendency is to be angry and blame the size of the room, or even in an entirely irrational manner another person.

However, in all honesty, most of the time, we find ourselves in circumstances largely of our own making. We have chosen step by step the position we find ourselves in. Not always mind you. Sometimes we are the victim of circumstances that are beyond our control, and people do sin against us. Yet the truth is, the hard road we are on is often of our own making.

Can one get off the hard road? This is an interesting question. One of the hurdles of the hard road is that it is the result of many easy choices. These become habitual, and habits are difficult to break. If you are already on the hard road, you’ve programmed yourself to make easy choices, so making the many hard choices needed to get off this road is not something that comes naturally. After all, it’s easy choices that have led you down the road of least resistance.

Another hurdle of the hard road is related. Because getting off this road requires hard choices, people on this road will put roadblocks in the way of change. Anyone who comes along with advice will be told exactly why the suggested change cannot take place. A person on the hard road will find it very hard to admit their responsibility for the difficulties they are in, and to do so can crush a person’s sense of worth. Having been accustomed to making easy choices, not many will wish to see themselves in this difficult light, but will instead opt for what is much easier: self-delusion and blaming.

So can one get off the hard road? Yes. It requires taking full responsibility for being on that road. You might not be fully responsible for the mess you are in, but anything less than claiming that responsibility will not do. Act like you are responsible for the situation, and look at what you must do to resolve it. This is the adult thing to do. It’s probably a decision you want to share with another responsible friend who can help hold you accountable.