Back When It Came Easy

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News
Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — August 17, 2026, 7:05 a.m.

There was a time when life moved without friction.

Not perfect. Not glamorous. Not some movie version of youth where everything worked out and everybody knew your name. That was never my story. I was not the hero. I was not the star athlete. I was not chasing approval or attention. I was just there, moving through it.

And it came easy.

Not because life handed me anything. Because I didn’t try to force it.

The Way Things Flowed

Back then, I moved through life with a kind of loose, laissez-faire attitude. Whatever happened, happened. If something worked out, fine. If it didn’t, fine. I didn’t carry it. I didn’t wrestle it. I didn’t try to bend the world into shape.

I wasn’t trying to prove anything.

I wasn’t trying to control anything.

I wasn’t even particularly impressed by much of anything.

That probably made me stand out more than anything else. People notice when someone isn’t chasing what everyone else is chasing. It reads as confidence, even when it’s just indifference.

At the time, I didn’t think about it. I didn’t analyze it. I just lived it.

When It Stopped Being Easy

Life didn’t stay that way.

It got heavier. Not all at once, but steadily. Responsibilities, expectations, plans—things you’re supposed to take seriously if you’re going to build something, maintain something, hold onto something.

And somewhere along the line, I started trying to push life in a direction.

That’s where the trouble starts.

Because life doesn’t always go where you push it. Sometimes it resists. Sometimes it ignores you. And sometimes it breaks in ways you can’t fix.

The hardest truth I’ve had to live with is simple: there are things you cannot steer, no matter how hard you try.

My wife’s death made that clear in a way nothing else ever could.

That wasn’t a setback. That wasn’t a detour. That was the end of any illusion that life could be managed into compliance.

What Came After

After that, something changed.

Not all at once. Not in a dramatic moment. But gradually, the way I moved through life shifted again.

Back toward something I recognized.

I stopped trying to force outcomes. I stopped expecting things to go the way I thought they should. I stopped negotiating with reality.

Now it’s simpler than that.

One day at a time.

Do what I can. Take care of what’s in front of me. Treat people with decency, compassion, and respect. Do the best I can with what I’ve got.

And if that’s not enough, then it’s not enough.

God is going to do what God is going to do.

That’s not resignation. That’s clarity.

What High School Actually Was

People like to talk about “glory days.”

That’s not what this is.

High school wasn’t better because it was exciting or meaningful in some grand way. It mattered because it was the last time life felt unforced. The last time I wasn’t carrying the weight of outcomes. The last time I could move through things without resistance.

That’s what I keep coming back to.

Not the events. Not the people. Not the nostalgia.

The way it felt to live without pushing.