Thursday Thoughts

Let it be Easy

Northern California, 2024. Photograph taken by me.

What are you making more difficult than it has to be in your life? 

Depending on what you’re going through, this question might make you want to punch me, but hear me out first. 

Life has many hard things. It has hard things like stepping on a Lego when you’re already having a frustrating day, and it has hard things like trying to figure out how to live without someone you love. Sometimes a bunch of small things add up to feeling like a big thing. 

I don’t have to tell you this. If we know one thing it’s that life is hard. I’m not here to argue with that. Life is hard. Being human is confusing and difficult and heartbreaking. Trying to build a life that doesn’t make you dread each new week might seem impossible. Maybe you’re stuck living with choices that a past you who wasn’t healed, or had different religious beliefs, or didn’t know their sexuality made. 

That’s why my question isn’t asking why you’re making your life difficult, it’s asking where you’re making your life more difficult than it has to be. 

Let me start with a very simple example. When I was young, my mom went through a really long spell (like at least several years) where we didn’t have a dustpan. We’d sweep, and then have to try to scoop the dirt onto a piece of paper. Yes, we were broke, but even my mom admits now that we probably could have figured out how to spend a couple bucks on a cheap plastic dustpan that would have made all our lives easier. 

I come from a long line of “Make it do-ers.” This can be wonderful. I love all the ways I learned to make do from my mom and other people in my life. I learned that tossing a pretty piece of cloth over a big box can make a decent end table in a pinch. That ice cream sandwiches bought with the change you and your sisters scrounged together from around the RV when you’re broke can taste like a delicacy. That a good scrub can make those thrift store dolls look like new. I can entertain myself with almost nothing, and know what items are good to get at the grocery store when you need filling meals for cheap. 

I thank my ancestors for their innovation, thriftiness, and pleasure in small things. I do not thank them for teaching me that to reach for more or better—even when it is within my power!—is somehow selfish or ungrateful, or just plain wasteful. 

There is no nobility in suffering for suffering’s sake. I can confidently assure you that there is no reward in this life or the next for continuing to wear that ratty t-shirt when you have the means to buy something you love, and that makes you smile when you look in the mirror. 

No choir of angels will sing your praises because you spent half your life obsessing about your body weight, or refused to relax until every single thing in your house was put in place, or said yes to that favor your only-sort-of-friend roped you into—completely bulldozing your boundaries in the process. 

If there’s some point system in place somewhere, I’m pretty sure we can get plenty just navigating life and trying to be a decent human. Although it’s possible that I’m already too far in the hole to dig myself out after spending the first 30 years of my life thinking gay people needed to be changed, and spreading a lot of ideologies that I’ve since discovered to be wrong. Let’s forget the point system, shall we? (If you want to wander in the quagmire of human ethics, just watch The Good Place) 

Here are some examples of things we say and do to make ourselves needlessly suffer:

• “I can’t buy clothing I like until I get skinny”

• ”I can’t spend money on a latte out with my friend because Financial Guru says if I don’t buy lattes I might be able to buy a house by 2089, provided the world hasn’t burned up by then” 

• “This item is so much prettier and sturdier but it cost two dollars more, so I will get this ugly plastic one” 

• “I have to go to the family reunion with the uncle who abused me because people might get mad if I don’t” 

• “I knooow that so and so is never there for me when I need them, and then they ask me for favors constantly, but I just can’t say no. It would be too awkward!” 

• “Yeah, that way is obviously easier, but this is fine. I’m fine. I’ve always done it this way and I only got carpal tunnel from it that one time.” 

• “I know I would hate that thing that might help me. No, I’ve never tried it. I just know it wouldn’t work.”

• ”Must be nice to have money to travel/afford to have one of you stay at home with the kids/only work part time, etc.” *Would be perfectly capable of doing any of these things if they were willing to shift some things around in their lives*

Before you judge me for sounding judgy, let me tell you that I do understand there is lots of nuance to all of these sorts of things. What I am talking about here is the things you quite literally have an option to do differently, and don’t allow yourself to have or do because of your own mindset and beliefs about it. 

If you don’t have money to update your wardrobe, I hear you! I’ve been there! I still can’t afford to have the wardrobe of my dreams, but I also know lots of people who don’t let themselves feel good in what they wear because they’ve decided it’s shallow, or wasteful, or prideful, etc. 

Beyond that, I know people who just take pride in making life hard for themselves. I lived in Montana for a bunch of my life, and talk about people who will brag to you about putting up with crap like they’re gonna get a medal for it. (Love you guys, but what are you doing?) It’s not “tough” to force everyone to drive their kids in for school in a frickin’ blizzard y’all. It’s just silly. 

I think you get the point now, right? Life is hard, but it doesn’t all have to be hard. It’s okay to seek joy, to allow yourself happiness, to get out of your own way and live the life you want to live on your own terms as much as it is within your power.

The beautiful thing is that all that deep self care and delight will carry you through the bad things in life that you actually don’t have control over. Even the smallest step forward can lead you down the path to the kind of happiness you didn’t think was possible. 

Posting imperfect art is part of how I’m trying to let things be easy for myself. It’s okay not to be perfect. I can be a beginner.