Origins
It's time to put into words what Never Easy, Sometimes Harder means for me personally.
The expression came to me after a workout at the gym a few years ago. Our instructor and coach has an insatiable desire to keep asking for us to do more. No prob. I like doing more. I like the burn. I love the feeling of laying out everything I have. She says we need to embrace the suck. Yeah, I can do that. And in post-workout conversation, the words never easy sometimes harder tumbled out of my mouth. The more I thought about it, the more it rang true as a genuine expression of how I see life. In the case of our instructor and working out, it means you think you have embraced the suck (never easy) and then, you do even more (sometimes harder).
For me, it's how life works.
Never Easy. Though we have victories and celebrations, each comes at a cost, with an investment of ourselves. To achieve victory, we sacrifice sleep, embrace sweat, fatigue, and pain. To have genuine love, we embrace vulnerability, forgiveness, kindness, and selflessness. And that is Never Easy.
Sometimes Harder. This is the uglier, more painful, emotionally unsatisfying place where we don't get the results we have worked hard for. It's the place where A+B does not equal C. It's where we run out of knowledge, resources, and are left with only burning desires and no means to accomplish them. We forgive. We are selfless. We sacrifice. And we don't reach <fill in the blank>. It's the 4:30 AM runs and smoothie dinners and not winning the match. It's the middle of the night prayers where we literally cry out all our frustration and longing and are left empty.
We can whine, complain, decide to eat 2 pounds of bacon, and call in sick. But what exactly does that give us? Nothing? Actually, it makes things worse than nothing. That decision literally takes away every chance of building the fortitude we need to achieve our goals. And we miss every miracle meant to happen along the way.
Or, we can embrace sometimes harder. Embrace the doubt and confusion and make the determined decision to hope, to take action, and believe as if our actions and a miracle could get us there. Maybe we get there, maybe we don't. But either way, we will have changed our mind and our will, and become more resilient individuals.
Either way, it's hard. It's just the results that are different.
The expression came to me after a workout at the gym a few years ago. Our instructor and coach has an insatiable desire to keep asking for us to do more. No prob. I like doing more. I like the burn. I love the feeling of laying out everything I have. She says we need to embrace the suck. Yeah, I can do that. And in post-workout conversation, the words never easy sometimes harder tumbled out of my mouth. The more I thought about it, the more it rang true as a genuine expression of how I see life. In the case of our instructor and working out, it means you think you have embraced the suck (never easy) and then, you do even more (sometimes harder).
For me, it's how life works.
Never Easy. Though we have victories and celebrations, each comes at a cost, with an investment of ourselves. To achieve victory, we sacrifice sleep, embrace sweat, fatigue, and pain. To have genuine love, we embrace vulnerability, forgiveness, kindness, and selflessness. And that is Never Easy.
Sometimes Harder. This is the uglier, more painful, emotionally unsatisfying place where we don't get the results we have worked hard for. It's the place where A+B does not equal C. It's where we run out of knowledge, resources, and are left with only burning desires and no means to accomplish them. We forgive. We are selfless. We sacrifice. And we don't reach <fill in the blank>. It's the 4:30 AM runs and smoothie dinners and not winning the match. It's the middle of the night prayers where we literally cry out all our frustration and longing and are left empty.
We can whine, complain, decide to eat 2 pounds of bacon, and call in sick. But what exactly does that give us? Nothing? Actually, it makes things worse than nothing. That decision literally takes away every chance of building the fortitude we need to achieve our goals. And we miss every miracle meant to happen along the way.
Or, we can embrace sometimes harder. Embrace the doubt and confusion and make the determined decision to hope, to take action, and believe as if our actions and a miracle could get us there. Maybe we get there, maybe we don't. But either way, we will have changed our mind and our will, and become more resilient individuals.
Either way, it's hard. It's just the results that are different.
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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