Putting Up With Shit Is Part of Life

Who has been teaching people that they don’t have to put up with shit? Because you do. Every single day.

You have to deal with your boss, your spouse, your friends, your neighbors, and society in general. You have to deal with politics you don’t agree with, store policies you don’t like, products disappearing from shelves, traffic, rude people, and disappointment.

You have to deal with somebody else getting the promotion. Somebody else getting the girl or the boy you wanted. Somebody else making the team instead of you. Somebody else getting the opportunity you thought you deserved. That’s called living in a society.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve started teaching people that every inconvenience is an injustice and every disappointment is someone else’s fault. We’ve convinced people that if something upsets them, they shouldn’t have to tolerate it.

Take the recent case of one boy stabbing another. You even have a small percentage of people arguing that he should somehow get away with it. Why? Because we’ve raised some people to believe that if they’re angry enough, offended enough, or feel justified enough, the rules shouldn’t apply to them. No. Society doesn’t work that way.

Maybe instead of teaching our kids that they don’t have to put up with shit, we should teach them this simple truth: Yeah, you do. You don’t always get your way. You don’t always win. You don’t always get picked. You don’t always get what you think you deserve.

Life is unfair. People disappoint you. Rules frustrate you. Somebody else gets the job, the scholarship, the boyfriend, the girlfriend, the raise, or the opportunity. And you know what? You get up the next morning and keep going. Because that’s adulthood. That’s maturity. That’s character.

The people who learn to handle disappointment become productive adults. The people who think they should never have to tolerate frustration, unfairness, or being told no become angry adults who think the world owes them something. It doesn’t.

Nobody owes you a promotion. Nobody owes you a relationship. Nobody owes you a spot on the team. And society certainly doesn’t owe you a life free from frustration. Learning to put up with things you don’t like isn’t weakness. It’s one of the most important skills you’ll ever learn.