Character Development Isn't Easy!

The process of growth as one sees it in trees and plants is very interesting, but the same process as illustrated in one’s own experience is often painfully lacking in entertainment. Many people note with unflagging zeal the signs of development of plant or animal life, but submit very unwillingly to the conditions of the same kind of development in themselves. Growth is one thing to a spectator and quite another thing to its subject. The first sees all the signs of movement, the second feels all the birth-pains into a larger life; for growth is a kind of continued birth, the passage out of smaller into greater things, and it carries with it a certain kind of pain. There are few things so difficult to bear as the waiting involved in the process of growth. To put forth effort of any kind is easy, but to patiently abide development within one is a great test of character. Struggle is often deified as something inherently noble, but struggle is of very little importance unless it results in growth. There are a great many barren struggles in the world
because no permanent moral results are achieved by them, as there is a
great deal of wasted energy because nothing permanent is accomplished by giving it out. Life would be easy if we could secure its end in a few months or a few years. What makes it difficult is the necessity laid upon us of remaining patient and acquiescent while the hand of the potter holds us under its steady pressure. There are many times when nothing but heroic fortitude keeps us cheerful, and these times of passivity, so far as definite action is concerned, are often the most fruitful and progressive periods in our lives; for growth, not action, is the real measure of life, and one often grows as much in enforced passivity as in the most intense activity. –Christian Union