"We can do hard things" and other twaddlefartery we should send back to 2019
“Find your brave,” says Brene Brown, and so far, no one has yelled from the audience, “do you mean ‘courage?’ Cuz brave is an adj—” only to be carried out by an undercover Vulnerability Security Team planted in the crowd for this exact purpose.
No one has yelled out, because I personally have not been invited to any Daring Greatly conferences. If I were, I would Dare Greatly to correct this cutesy grammatical gaffe. I’d challenge folksily-accented, much beloved (even by me!) Brene, galvanizing the crowd’s ire in my pert-nosed direction. And then I’d get booed out for criticizing the influencer in the arena.
Then again, am I not the (wo)man in the arena here? Am I not “living my truth?” (Another barfomatic phrase.)
I know. I’m bad at this, and clearly missing the entire point.
But “we can do hard things”, according to Brene’s more risque messy-mopped sister in self-help charms, Glennon Doyle.
We can do hard things.
Somehow, this motivational nugget has permeated my consciousness.
It wriggles in sarcastically, when I’m slightly inconvenienced. (Like when I forget my earbuds and the retirees at the coffeeshop loudly discuss their cats toileting habits in depth.)
It crops up as intended, when I’m on my 65th 30-second loop of hold music or when the phlebotomist wants 38 vials of blood. We can do hard things (ka ka ka klap doo doo da doo do…)
But mostly it pops up in my mind like a gopher infestation: blank-eyed yet cheerful, unwelcome, pervasive, and absolutely relentless.
We CAN do hard things. We do them all the time. I do them all the time. You do them all the time. But…must we?
Some days it feels like we’ve just made everything hard. Not just medical hoops. I’m also supposed to curl my hair with a flat iron, curate a capsule wardrobe, crush the patriarchy (while being crushed by it), remember all my passwords, handwash my delicates and just ACK.
But aren’t you just a better person when you’re slugging through something hard!? Don’t you feel more noble and good?
Yeah, you kinda do. I do.
You know what phrase we actually NEED?
“We can do easy things.”
I struggle with easy things. (I’m writing this column during the hour I promised myself a nap. And now I’m editing it during meditation time.)
Why is doing easy things so damn hard?
Because things that could be easy aren’t. Yet. “We can do easy things” is pretty much the golden guidepost for good user experience. It should have been the inspiration behind every aspect of medical interface. In other words, good user experience would streamline patients into ease through online scheduling, valet parking, electronic records, telehealth, etc. And it’s not just medical. I want to boil the world down to user experiences, and rebuild it from this viewpoint.
Easy feels sleazy, because we’ve been brainwashed. My mom had to beg me to accept the gift of laundry service for a YEAR. I don’t love laundry. It was physically destroying me to lug multiple loads every week 4 stories down to the basement, where we have one washer/dryer for dozens of tenants. But it just seemed…wrong, somehow, to let someone else do it. I might as well have tied my entire self-image as an adult to my ability to do laundry—anything else felt cheap and freeloader-y. And then finally I caved. It freed up so much space in my life I nearly doubled my income that year.
We’re addicted to hard things. I love a good sufferfest—the stressier, the better. If I’m not on breakneck deadline at 2am in a flow-state hunchfest, where’s the glory? Where’s the fun? While I think challenge is healthy, I’m not healthy enough to meet the ones I crave. It’s time to figure out how to find that rush someplace other than sacrifice and suffering.
Because, well, we can do hard things. Everyone reading this blog has slogged through it. We don’t even register how hard hard things are on us, anymore. We bend and bend and bend and don’t break. Until, like me, we do.
“We can do hard things” is a rallying cry to exhausted, burnt out women.
It’s meant to bring us to our tired feet. Just one more, gals! And another!
Forever. And ever. And ever.
I mean that for ALL women, not just feebs. I see you resisting the urge to smother your own toddlers and spouses, fighting with your undies riding up inside your leggings, enduring the micromisogyny of every damn day. There are so many hard things.
And you know what I DON’T want to tell you?
“We can do hard things.”
You already know that. You’re already doing them. Maybe you need a reminder (full truth, sometimes I do), but more likely, you need a retreat.
I want to tell you, we can do easy things. Or at least maybe we can if we start trying hard. Because currently? We suck at doing easy things. We suck at accepting ALL the help we need, cutting ourselves any slack, and half-assing what really only needed a quarter-ass, anyway. (I mean, I suck at all those things.)
I think we all have a challenge here, but feebs especially have a stricter challenge. Right now, sickness is the non-negotiable hard thing on my plate. It takes up most of the plate. The hard things I want to choose—mountains, roads, work—cannot be on the proverbial table at all.
That pisses me off. And I act as there are two options: doing something really effing hard, or completely giving up and doing nothing while spiraling into pity and panic.
But there is a third choice: I could do an easy thing.
I could reorganize a mission statement instead of someone’s entire brand.
I could offer ONE copy option instead of three.
I could bring flowers instead of a potluck dish.
I could (okay this one’s my kryptonite) send it off unfinished and imperfect—whatever it is.
Easy is a hard choice for me.
“We can do easy things” feels like something I need to hear. Something I don’t want to hear. Something that feels fake and impossible at first.
“We can do easy things.”
Yeah. Sure. Wait, what?
“We can do easy things.”
Okay, maybe. I mean, I could try.
WE CAN DO EASY THINGS.
You’re right. In fact, we must.
Honestly, this truth might take all my brave to live.
But, we can do hard things.
