october 1 mgd
When you're a kid, you think easy is better than hard. Easy is quick, convenient, low stress. Hard isn't. Hard hurts. Easy is junk food, hard is going to grandma's house, and grandma's house smells weird and she keeps talking about dead people. And so, for a while, you decide that things that are easy to do are better than things that are hard to do.
Then, later, you flip-flop. You start to venerate and gravitate towards the hard things. Hard is slower, less convenient, and usually more more stressful, but now you kind of get off on the hurt, because you want to grow. Because hard things lead to growth, and growth feels like victory. When you grow you are figuring out more about more, which gives you more to figure out, which helps you figure out more about more, which gives you more to figure out, which helps you figure out more about yourself.
You start to want growth. You start to understand that growth is the end result of a process, and that the process is a bunch of hard things held together with a bungee cord.
Easy is still easy by the way. This whole time, easy is just there, being easy, watching you and scoffing at your new fascination on growth. It misses you, though, so it tempts you. It tells you that sometimes, you need easy. That you deserve easy. That easy can your reward for growing.
I thought about this a few hours after having a unique conversation today. The details don't matter much, but, in short, I was telling someone about the experience of quitting a high-paying job after only two months. I told him that I walked away from the biggest paycheque of my life because the workplace was dysfunctional. When pressed for more texture, I told him that one seemed to care about process, and no one really cared about the result. I told him that I didn't like irritable, depressed, overtired person I had become. What I didn't tell him was that I asked both my partner and my therapist if it was okay to want to quit. They both said yes, so I did.
The way he responded suggested that he thought I had done the easy thing. As if quitting a job is easy. As if quitting a highest-paying job I'd ever have (and will ever have) after two months was easy to do. It was not. I felt like I was letting my partner down. I felt like I was weak for not being able to compartmentalize and to go along to get along. I felt like I was a bad person for protecting my peace and safeguarding my integrity.
The truth doesn't look like the truth unless it's your truth.
🌲 gonna
🌼 go
🌱 touch edit
🌳 grass Daniel
🌷 now
Be good to yourself.
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