Hard Things

I don’t like doing hard things. I guess nobody really does, except David Goggins. Just about the only thing I want to do these days is sit in my sauna and read Blue Highways, imagining myself at 55 driving the backroads of America listening to Paul Simon. 

My oldest daughter, Lily, handed us a letter this morning. “Dear mom and dad, I really don’t want to go to the STEM camp because last time I did not have fun…”

I pulled out my phone to find a David Goggins clip. Then I thought of the summer I worked on a vineyard in Kentucky for $7.50 an hour.

The entire crop had been left to grow wild. The owner wanted me to get it looking like Romanée-Conti. I hoed that ground for two long months, until my hands blistered. I quit for a job down the street at the Amazon factory as a graveyard-shift security guard. It was a 50c-per-hour pay cut, but making sure nobody snuck out spam or compression socks was much easier than being ingested by briars and poison ivy. Plus, I could sneak in a nap while patrolling the Hazmat mezzanine. 

“If you learn to do hard things”, I told Lily, “life gets easier.”

“I never knew you worked on a vineyard,” she said. “Was it pretty?” 

“In a chaotic kind of way, yes.” 

“I mean, after you pulled out all those weeds. Did you get it looking good?” 

“No, I got another job.” 

“You quit?” Lily smiled: small, sharp, far too knowing for eleven. 

My wife’s eyes narrowed on me. 

“You’re going to STEM camp,” I said, wishing I’d just shown her the David Goggins video.