One hard thing (another re-post, because it's so true)
Where I'm coming from. And where I'm going.
When I grew up…well, when I started to feel reluctantly like a grown-up, getting my degree, marrying, moving away from the fun of university and student life and into the more complex and responsible version of myself that was professional life…I remember wandering the stacks in McNally Robinson bookstore, looking for a book that would tell me what to do. What to do! Seriously, that is not really what I wanted. I didn’t want any more rules, or even guidelines. I more wanted a vision. I wanted a written or visual picture of where I was heading. I am inspired in the pages of literature. There didn’t seem to be a book, though, that captured all of my heart, all that I wanted to be, become, do. I didn’t quite know where I belonged.
I felt aimless. Or rather, I had a lot of aims, and I could tell, even in that early stage of adulthood, that probably it would not quite work out for me to head in that many directions at once. One life, I was starting to realize, was a terrible and wonderful gift. One life, with time moving relentlessly forward, both faster and slower than I wanted, each moment dropping out of my hands never to be returned, was a lot. And yet, so not enough!
I love a lot of things. I am a big fan of Disneyworld, and that probably tells you a lot about me, right there. Sensory overload? Yes, please. However, sensory overload, while pleasant and even fun here and there, is not a good day to day routine. Not at all. Furthermore, the demands of being a fully functioning grown-up in the working world, in the relational world, and in the world of planning for the inevitable future, felt so overwhelming. Not the adrenaline-pumping cascade of thrills of a rollercoaster or excellent 3D adventure, but the high stakes, mundane series of steps to get out of student debt, maintain vehicles, house, yard, and workspaces, and try to make friends in a new and unfamiliar community. I desperately wanted someone else to help me sort out my own specific contact with the chaos of normal life.
What I found were a whole library and bookstore (keep in mind, this was well before Amazon) full of niche manuals, biographies, ideas, and well-laid out coffee table books on single topics I cared about. Horses, dogs, gardens, kids, writing, fitness, small business, self-help, faith and life, keeping chickens, and on and on. All of it was interesting, and I especially liked the blank, leather bound journals hearkening back to Middle Earth and other assorted fantasy worlds, but none of them had any advice on tying it all together into one achievable week. Let alone an aesthetically stunning week (something I can’t help but long for in my more honest moments).
It turns out that I was a victim of the classic misunderstanding of children: that just because someone has presented life as simple, doesn’t make it so. Life is hard. It is complex. Times a billion. There is literally no cap on how much difficulty or complexity one can encounter, if one tries to step outside of the known and familiar. We live on little islands of status quo, which we can easily (as I did) mistake for reality. They are not reality. They are little islands of status quo - and surrounded by an infinite sea of tossing waves that holds all the terrible diversity of life and depth our own ocean does.
So, in remembering the vague feeling of trying to grasp on to some direction, certainty, rudder, or pole, I get it now. I was edging out of childhood and the many, many oversimplifications that had protected my growing mind from the largeness of it all. I was both fascinated, and horrified, by what I was starting to dimly perceive. Could it be that the rules I had lived by didn’t always apply? Could it be that there really were other perspectives so different from mine that dialogue would not even be possible because our assumptions were completely, not even opposed, but spatially just…so far apart? Could I really be surrounded by the immensity of all I did not know, and yet still be expected to live, day to day, as if I was a competent, reliable human being?
I’ve never lost the sadness I felt, leaving a library or bookstore with purchases in hand, that I had not found the one book to rule them all, one book to find them, one book to bring them all and in the darkness, bind them, into a cohesive life plan. With the subsequent cultural shift to social sharing and the explosion of available lives to observe and critique and emulate, I have not moved any farther towards following any one voice. Pinterest it is. I am responsible for gathering, sorting, filtering, curating, and finally synthesizing my diverse foci of attention into a daily list of to-dos. Ugh.
This problem of too much to deal with is apparent in all areas of life. One advantage of having a profession is the dubious benefit of constraints. With constraints, some of the choice in the infinity of possibility is excluded. There are lanes, and areas, and domains, and competencies. Work life and contracts or employers further limit what is allowed, encouraged, possible, to do. I found going to work paradoxically calming. Compared to how I experienced self-care routines, leisure options, and relational dreams and nightmares (aka parenting!), work was concrete, predictable, and achievable.
However, the problems I encountered, as an occupational therapist working with individuals with disabilities or injuries, were very complex, and in ways that made my life look easy. True, I had an extremely focused lens to apply to these problems, and processes that provided rigour and accountability both, but still, I saw that the pain and loss my clients were facing were large. Too large. There are so many ways for humans to experience grief. I soon found that my empathy was a danger for me, and I had to compartmentalize to survive.
Compartmentalization is a strategy for defense of the self, and it works, in the short term. But it also prohibits communication between the various parts of oneself. I’ve used compartmentalization plenty, and I suspect there are very few health care professionals who don’t, but as I’ve evolved in my specific skill sets, and also as I’ve continued to fight for maturity in the rest of my life (feeling always so un-skill-full!), I’ve moved closer and closer to a related, but slightly healthier approach to dealing with a lot. That approach is encapsulated by this Substack’s content title: One Hard Thing.
One hard thing, as in, one hard thing at a time. One hard thing. One hard thing. One hard thing.
This sounds maybe deceptively simple. It is not. One hard thing means making the choice to do the one thing that is most important, first. It means attending to a lot, accepting the chaos and infinity around me, and then taking a step, regardless. Which step, which direction, and with what energy or force behind it, is up to me. No one else can make that choice (and I wouldn’t want them to, even though I’d like to blame others for the results in my more petty moments). It comes down to owning my smallness, and yet deciding to move forward into the infinite area of the “not me,” even though I can’t possibly know for sure what will happen next, once I do. Complexity upon complexity.
The mercy of this phrase is in the word “one.” One thing at a time, I’ve learned from plenty of experience, is easier to manage than trying to multi-task. It is also easier to move in one direction as opposed to trying to battle a multi-front war, pay down many concurrent debts, carry on more than one conversation at a time, or text and drive. One hard thing is the art of living, not by creating walls so as to more effectively two-track, but by slowing down and living life at the pace my brain, and body, and heart can truly handle. Which is, as per Einstein et al, being in only one place at a particular time. Or as yogis everywhere put it, Being. Here. Now.
And it is hard. Because, if I am going to do anything worth doing (and maybe this goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway), then what I’m doing is going to edge into the metaphorical ocean a little. I will feel the undertow, glimpse the whitecaps, maybe even see a shark fin. It is going to be dangerous, and lonely, and inherently risky. It is going to make me feel inadequate, maximally challenged at times, and yet…the fact that it is worth doing will pull me to expand my (known, accessible, named, comprehended) metaphorical island that little hard thing at a time. I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t mean something to me, and that is the key. I want, I wish, I dream, I imagine…I value what I do not yet have, but I decide to move towards it, rather than wishing it would somehow come to me.
Cheating is not compatible with one hard thing living. The point of this motto is to be honest with myself, break down those walls inside (however useful they were at one point), look at the mess with clear eyes, and choose. Not with resources I wish I had, but with those I have on hand. Let’s say I’m on that island, and I have what I have. Nothing more. If I’m going to survive, and even more, thrive, as Robinson Crusoe, the Swiss Family Robinson, or even Mafatu in Call it Courage, then I need to accept what is, explore what I have and do the one hard thing my values tell me could be the next right thing to do.
Home is the fulcrum a good life swings from. The base for going out, the haven for coming back in, the origin and goal. But one hard thing is how to add pressure (or take it away) so as to keep that delicate balance intact. I believe now that none of us are really designed to have any other capability. I’ve tried to juggle everything at once. I’ve tried to simultaneously travel east and west (and north and south, too, at times). I’ve tried to pretend that up was down, grief was joy, and that I could hold two completely opposing certainties in one tired skull, and I no longer believe that this is “compatible with life.” It’s simply a way of killing oneself slowly. Or even not very slowly.
I’m working now at home, one hard thing at a time. And that is enough. And I believe it is the direction I’ve been looking for in all those bookstores. Join me, if you also would like to take a shot at sanity, at small steps, at simplicity, at integration rather than the many counterfeits for a whole life. I love an adventure (still love Disneyworld) and I love a group adventure even better. But I’m doing this one regardless of company, and I don’t mind if you observe for a while and see how it goes.
I expect it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be a thing. It’s going to be only one thing at a time. But, I believe, it will also be possible, foundational, creative, and safe(-r than the alternatives).
One hard thing, in the direction of home, could be kinda beautiful.
