The Road Less Travelled

"Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan
more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their
problems, their burdens, and their difficulties in life as if life were generally
easy, as if life should be easy."
"As Benjamin Franklin said, 'Those things that hurt, instruct.' It is for
this reason that wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome
problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems."
"What are these tools, these techniques of suffering, these means of
experiencing the pain of problems constructively that I call discipline?
There are four: delaying of gratification, acceptance of responsibility,
dedication to truth, and balancing … they are simple tools, and almost
all children are adept in their use by the age of ten. Yet presidents and
kings will often forget to use them, to their downfall."

This is the self-help book read by people who don't read self-help
books. It contains none of the alluring promises of boundless joy
and happiness that are the feature of personal development writing,
yet has still been a massive bestseller. Famously beginning with the
words "Life is difficult," it covers such gloomy topics as the myth of
romantic love, evil, mental illness, and the author's psychological and
spiritual crises.
Perhaps because of its lack of rosiness, it is easy to give this book
our confidence—it works on the premise that once we know the worst,
we are free to see what is beyond it. The Road Less Traveled is inspirational
but in an old-fashioned way, putting self-discipline at the top of
the list of values for a good life. If you believe that there are no easy
ways to enlightenment or even full mental health, that factors like commitment
and responsibility are the seeds of fulfillment, then you belong
in Dr. Peck's territory.
Peck is a conventionally trained psychotherapist, but has been influential
in the movement to have psychology recognize the stages of spiritual
growth. He sees the great feature of our times as being the
reconciliation of the scientific and the spiritual worldviews. The Road
Less Traveled is his attempt to bridge the gap further, and it has clearly
been successful. The book is welcomed by anyone who has found
themselves torn between the science of psychology and the spiritual
search.
Discipline
Self-control is the essence of Peck's brand of self-help. He says:
"Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline
we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve
all problems."

A person who has the ability to delay gratification has the key to psychological
maturity, whereas impulsiveness is a mental habit that, in
denying opportunities to experience pain, creates neuroses. Most large
problems we have are the result of not facing up to earlier, smaller
problems, of failing to be "dedicated to the truth." The great mistake
that most people make is believing that problems will go away of their
own accord.
This lack of responsibility will damage us in other ways. Our culture
puts freedom on a pedestal, yet as Eric Fromm showed in Escape from
Freedom, people have a natural willingness to embrace political authoritarianism
and give up their personal power. When it comes down to it,
we shy away from real freedom and choice just as much as we avoid
obviously negative things. Discipline is not only about "growing up" in
terms of accepting reality, but in the appreciation of the tremendous
range of choices before us.
The road and its rewards
One of the great insights of the book is how few people actually choose
the spiritual path. Just as there are many well-qualified sergeants who
baulk at becoming an officer, Peck observes, people in psychotherapy
often have little taste for the power that comes with genuine mental
health. Life on autopilot is preferable to any major challenge.
The Road Less Traveled is rich with the stories of real people.
Some of the vignettes demonstrate the transformation of a life, but in
other cases people merely refuse to change, or in the end can't be
bothered. Does this ring true? It is in these less extreme cases that we
are more likely to see our own quiet turning away from a bolder,
richer life. Rather than the horror of a mental illness, Peck says, most
of us have to deal with the straightforward anguish of missed
opportunities.
Yet why is this so, when the rewards are so great? The road less
traveled might be the spiritual path, but it is also much rockier and
dimly lit next to the regular highway of life, on which other people
seem happy enough. However, Peck says that to ask this question of
"Why bother?" we must know nothing about joy. The rewards of spiritual
life are enormous: Peace of mind and freedom from real worry
that most people never imagine is possible. Burdens are always ready to
be lifted, since they are no longer solely ours.

Nevertheless, deepened spirituality also brings responsibility; this is
inevitable as we move from spiritual childhood to adulthood. Peck
remembers St Augustine, who said: "If you are loving and diligent, you
may do whatever you want." Just as our previous spiritual timidity and
laziness resulted (as we can now see) in a very limited existence, so discipline
opens the door to limitlessness in our experience of life. Only
the more enlightened can be amused by the fact that others think they
must lead a boring and restrained life; the walls that look stark from
without may simply be shielding us from the glow of rapture within.
Love is a decision
What is the fuel on the road less traveled? Love, of course, and Peck is
at his best discussing this thing that cannot be adequately defined. We
tend to think of love as effortless, the freefall of "falling in love." While
it may be mysterious, love is also effortful; love is a decision: "The
desire to love is not itself love. Love is as love does."
The ecstatic state of being in love is in part a regression to infancy, a
time when we felt our mother and ourselves to be one; we are back in
communion with the world and anything seems possible. Yet just as the
baby comes to realize that he or she is an individual, so the lover eventually
returns to his or her self. At this point, Peck says, the work of
"real" love begins. Anyone can fall in love, but not everyone can decide
to love. We may never control love's onset, but we may—with discipline—
remain in charge of our response. And once these "muscles" of
love have been used they tend to stay, increasing our power to channel
love in the most life-giving and appropriate way.
Final comments
The discerning reader will note the contrast between Peck's belief that
psychological change is necessarily slow, and the cognitive psychology
view that our limitations can be removed without much trouble if we
know how (see Martin Seligman, David D. Burns, Anthony Robbins).
This is a basic divide in the self-help literature: the hard work ethic,
components of which include building character and discovering soul;
and the belief in mental technology, that our problems are not deepseated
and can be addressed by practical psycho-technological methods.
If the former way is characterized by discipline and self-knowledge, the
latter says that if we only have the right tools, we can create whoever
we want to be.
Those readers who exclusively cheer for the latter should balance
themselves by reading Peck. He discusses, for instance, an experience
that is not referred to in modern psychology at all: "grace." A surprise
burst of peace, gratitude, and freedom, Peck feels this to be the highest
point of human experience, fruit of a life of discipline and purpose.
In his insistence on morality, discipline, and admiration of longsuffering,
Peck's writing can seem old-fashioned. Yet he is no conformist
in his denouncement of the failure of psychotherapy to
recognize people as spiritual beings, and the book has surprised many
readers by its embrace of the Jungian, New Age concepts of the collective
unconscious and synchronicity. Somehow, the blend of Christianity,
the New Age, and academic psychology does work.
Peck's classic will seem a little earnest to some, to others it will be
full of life-changing insights. It is one of the giants of the self-help
canon, having sold over seven million copies, and its title has entered
the public idiom. In spite of what Peck says about resistance to spirituality,
the less traveled road is clearly getting more traffic.