Unless you’ve managed to make it through your life without losing a loved one, experiencing a terrible end to a relationship, or never having made a stupid decision at the moment that ended up costing you dearly, I probably don’t have to tell you that life is just really hard sometimes.
Sickness, job loss, deceit, money issues, the list can go on and on. The number of things that can come at you at any moment is almost always much more significant than the list of things that turned out how you wanted them to.
Calling Life what it is, Suffering
Chapter 6 of Jordan Peterson’s book 12 Rules for Life is titled ” Put your house in perfect order,” and it may be my favorite of a text full of brilliance. Not because it’s a hopeful, pick me up that tells you that life is all going to work out, even when things get rough. But because it’s a call for ultimate accountability and a forewarning that if you think you’re immune to the type of challenges that are listed in the first paragraph at the top of this page, you’re wrong.
“Put your house in perfect order” is about sorting your $hit out and understanding that life IS suffering. If you don’t prepare yourself as best as you can to take on that suffering with the type of nobility and responsibility that it deserves, you will not be able to handle a lot of the things that you experience, and ultimately you will have nobody to blame for not doing so but you. Like the loss of your marriage, the loss of a business, a company that you work for 30 years eliminating your job months before your retirement, etc. If you’re not prepared for those moments, you will not deal with them well. People that don’t deal with suffering well tend to want to blame that suffering on someone or something. Their spouse, their parents, siblings, perceived enemies…. the world.
Peterson speaks in depth in this chapter to the Columbine shooters. Those kids went to a very dark place after experiencing bullying. That bullying evolved over time from a hatred of a few bullies to a dislike of a school, to a hatred of the world. They wanted to see the world burn for what it had done to them. They wrote as such in journals before they murdered their classmates 20 years ago. The resentment they had for a society that they felt they weren’t a part of and that rejected them. This society deserved to be punished.
Peterson explains that it’s essential that we not forget that this type of mentality is not psychosis, in fact, it’s quite common when people experience great tragedy or hardship. The response often is anger at the universe, or if you’re religious, at your God. More remarkably, this stretches into hostile thinking, and vengeance to express the anger and pain that we are experiencing at the time.
Taking Responsibility is Redemption
So life is suffering. Most people have already experienced some of that and dealt with the outcome in one way or the other. Those that haven’t will find that out soon enough. The question is what can you do about it?
Well, the truth is, nothing can entirely shield you from experiencing hardships. Nothing can completely keep you from having to possibly suffer a failed relationship, or failure of a business, or loss of a loved one. What you can do is make sure that you do all you can under your control to make sure that not only are your life is as sorted out as possible (read put your house in perfect order) but as prepared as possible for those things when they happen.
When bad things happen, what is your first response? Is it “damn, I just can’t catch a break?”, or is it, “What did I do that contributed to this misfortune?” Did you do everything in your power to improve the situation or did you basically sabotage yourself in some way?
Peterson tells the story of Solzhenitsyn as an example repeatedly in this book. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn served as a Russian soldier in WWII. He was then arrested and imprisoned by his own government and people. He later was diagnosed with cancer while he was in prison. The guy’s life basically fell apart. Then he sat down and wrote The Gulag Archipelago, at significant risk to himself, to expose Soviet prison camps and the flaws of Lenin and communism. He realized his unquestioning support of the Communist Party contributed directly to his misery, and he decided to take responsibility for it and do something about it under the very worst of circumstances. Circumstances where the perfectly natural reaction would be to blame God or give up, but he didn’t, he actually took responsibility for the role he played in his own suffering and then persevered on to end up winning the Nobel Prize for writing The Gulag.
Peterson really solidifies his point by explaining that if our suffering is of our own fault, that’s a good thing. That means we actually have some say in what we experience. On the other hand, if you are living a life where you refuse to acknowledge that you had control over anything when your life is turned upside down, you’re basically saying that we are all doomed to live a life that is entirely regulated by external forces. Who the hell wants to exist in a world like that? Probably even a better question would be, out of the two, which type of belief is going to benefit the individual that holds that belief more?
The bottom line of Chapter 6 is this. When the trials of life that we all no doubt experience come to your doorstep, before blaming the universe, or a political faction, or an enemy, put your own house in order. Ask yourself if you have done all you could to prevent this from happening? Are you working hard at bettering yourself and your career? Are you working on your relationship with your spouse? Are you working on your health and diet? Are you trying to better yourself?
Are you doing something now that you know is wrong? You probably are. We all probably are. Either way, stop doing that today. Stop saying things that make you feel weak and insecure and start saying things that make you feel healthy and noble. Work to
As you begin to carry yourself this way, a very odd thing will start to happen. You will find more wrongs in your life that you control that you can work on. Your life will become more orderly and more straightforward. You’ll stop focusing on things externally that you can’t control that fill you with resentment and begin focusing on things that improve yourself that make you feel honorable.
Peterson explains that by doing this, you just might begin to see existence as naturally excellent and worth maintaining. You’ll become resistant to the trials and misfortunes that do appear, and instead of being full of anxiety and resentment during those times, you’re full of empowerment and nobility knowing you are fighting for something that you control and is fundamentally good.
Finally, imagine if this type of mentality spread throughout the world, imagine what kind of world we would be living in…
“The thing about life is, it’s so daily.” – unknown
Thank you for posting this. I’m looking around and there’s no end of disarray, and I’m not looking beyond my four walls. I’ve got work to do.
People speak of the “natural order” of things, but chaos appears to be the natural state. Where there’s any temporal sense of order, there’s also an acknowledgment that didn’t just happen of its own accord; order is unnatural, imposed, and fleeting. And that just accounts for the visible aspects.
Someone told me that to begin the day rightly, make the bed. I think there’s wisdom in that, because it’s an actionable plan that exposes the root of many problems: neglect. If you fail to get up in time to make the bed and meet your daily obligations, the bed remains unmade when it’s time to return to sleep: it’s a reminder to both a) get to bed, and b) get up on time. And when the bed gets made, it’s a visible reminder at night that, at least, the day started with a success. If that could happen, what might tomorrow hold?
Absolutely. I remind my son constantly, if you cannot make you’re bed every morning, you literally are conceding control of your live to chaos from the very moment you are awake. You have lost control from the beginning.
He’s 12 so you can imagine why we have that discussion a lot, but hopefully one day he gets it.