Quote of the Day: Will Rogers on Daily Inspiration

Notice he chooses the word “through” rather than “around.” “Around” hints at clever detours and cosmetic fixes; “through” is blunt, physical, and a little claustrophobic. It suggests contact, hands on the problem, eyes open, no illusion that the hard part can be outsourced. That’s the pulse of Will Rogers’s line: “The best way out of a difficulty is through it.”

We’re trained to treat obstacles like bad weather: wait them out, distract ourselves, find a covered walkway. But most difficulties aren’t storms; they’re knots. Ignore them and they tighten. Try to cut past them and you often create frayed ends, new anxieties, quieter resentments, unfinished conversations that keep charging interest. Going “through” is not macho stoicism; it’s a refusal to let the problem metastasize.

“Through” also restores agency. It turns a vague dread into a sequence: name what’s happening, choose the next right action, repeat. That might mean asking for help, having the uncomfortable talk, or doing the unglamorous work of showing up again tomorrow. The discomfort is real, but it’s finite, and on the other side is a sturdier kind of confidence, earned rather than imagined. This is courage that doesn’t posture, and resilience that gets built in small, cumulative reps.

Will Rogers, the famed American performer and satirist, spent his life translating hard truths into plain speech, while championing Native American rights and skewering easy hypocrisy. He understood that charm is most useful when it escorts people toward reality, not away from it.

If there isn’t a headline to hang this Sunday on, that’s fitting: most of our hardest battles aren’t historic, just human. Today, pick one difficulty you’ve been circling, and take the first step straight into it, through is how “out” becomes possible.