life is hard. anyone who considers that news either needs to share their secrets with the world or go out and see more of it.
hard work takes infinite forms; be it the work you get paid for, the work that keeps you alive and connected, or the work that enriches the world around you.
the problem is that in the never-ending to-do list, only one of these has a tangible value placed on it. it can be hard to feel accomplished for feeding yourself when you have bills to pay, but for many it’d hold more weight than anything else on the list.
the biggest struggle i’ve had in my life is mustering the energy to do ‘the basics’ – regular meals, brushing my teeth, keeping my space clean and so on. i can spend 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 3 months of the year running around the mountains and wrangling the kids at a summer camp, but the footnotes in your workday may have been the highest hurdles of my own.
there’s something disquieting about looking back on a full day only to realise that you skipped the smallest challenges. it’s embarrassing to have others sing your praises when you couldn’t even bring yourself to shower that morning. it puts an asterisk on your achievements; diminishes the efforts you have made. dulls the shine on acts that would have brought you immense pride in a vacuum.
i used to punish myself mentally and refuse to acknowledge the wins when i missed anything small, but part of the healthy lifestyle i intend to build is allowing yourself the freedom to fail without suffering. the world will break you down all by itself, there’s no need to do the work on its behalf!
for me personally, hard work is any work that you found hard. and for many, the biggest challenges are ones that seem tiniest. i feel most fulfilled by a task that i used to evade, because it shows how much i’ve been able to change.
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