[dvtrn]

Personally I'm inclined to disagree that it should be difficult, but am also not fully expecting my own journey for self-improvement and a modicum of actualization to just present itself like a one-click order Amazon package on my front door either

(but wouldn't that be nice?)

I like the way American actor Denzel Washington put it: "Ease is a greater threat to progress than hardship".

/slams $0.02 on the bar and walks off to read Thoreau :P

[levythe]

I think the confusion here is the multiple meanings of, "Should," one being, "morally ought to," and one being, "Is expected to, and raises warning flags that something is amiss if it does not."

[dvtrn]

That's what the Henry David Thoreau reference was supposed to cover.