Choosing Our Hard

How do we do that and why does it matter?

We’ve had a slew of folks join us recently, and new folks are showing up daily. So, first let me say, Hello! Welcome!

This newsletter is where I ruminate on integrity. Specifically, how to practice integrity as an imperfect person in a complex world. If that’s a thing you also ruminate on, you’re in the right place. I hope you’ll take the risk to participate actively in the conversation we’re having. We’re only going to get where we need to go together.

For paid subscribers, I’m embarking on a related side project about ambition. If you’d like to be part of that conversation, or just want to support the labor that goes into this newsletter every week with cash (which helps me pay my bills), become a paid subscriber.

The place God calls you to is where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. — Frederick Buechner

This week the rabbit hole of deep thought that I fell down was initially about effort. As in, how do we learn to dig in when necessary, allowing for discomfort and strain, in pursuit of something meaningful?

This matters to our integrity practice because some day we’re going to find something that matters to us deeply. And making it manifest in our daily life and relationships will not be easy. Will we be able to work hard enough— physically, emotionally, spiritually— to live into it? And how do we prepare to do that?

As a parent of young people I think about this a lot. My kids are of an age (16 and 20) when school and life are getting harder, more complicated, and increasingly on them to manage. In high school my oldest seemed to collapse any time he had to do something he didn’t really want to and, I’ll confess, I despaired. Had I somehow missed the boat on teaching him discipline and fortitude? How was he ever going to survive in the world if he had to “want” to do something in order to do it?

Who “wants” to clean the house, go to work or pay bills, not just some of the time but all the time? Carol Channing would tell you no one, and she would be right.

Thinking back on my own childhood, the truth is that I learned to apply myself through a mix of modeling, activity, guilt, and shame. Both my parents were very hard workers. They also signed me up for extracurriculars— sports and music lessons— which implicitly taught the relationship between practice (work) and achievement. Academic achievement was also explicitly stated as the only option for me. This wasn’t the case for my siblings by the time I was old enough to make those sorts of comparisons and that was where the guilt and shame came in.

It isn’t unusual in families where some siblings struggle with addiction, physical illness, or mental health, but as the “normal” kid, the “good” one, I felt like it was my job to furnish all the parental pride and satisfaction that my parents expected and very clearly weren’t getting. I was the baby, their last chance. If I didn’t redeem them as parents, redeem us all to the extent that I could, who would?

This presumption might have represented a logical fallacy, but it held deep emotional truth for me. And it worked in concert beautifully with all the other ways that children’s lives are built around fulfilling external expectations— whether at school or at home, in their religious community or neighborhood— to make me a very high-achieving kid. Anxious and depressed, but very high-achieving.

I love this Jack Handey bit from Saturday Night Live in the ‘90s. It’s darkly hilarious, not because what he says is true but because it’s truly a thing that adults do— enforce expectations through guilt and shame, ensuring that children are always looking outside of themselves for validation. We can laugh at the absurdity of it, but the sad reality is it works. Most kids get right in line. Is that what we want for them, though?

With my own kids, I’ve shied away from enforcing high expectations around external achievement because I didn’t want to encourage them to take after me at their age, hyper-focusing on extrinsic validation to balance out intrinsic self-hatred. Perhaps that has contributed to their tendency to struggle in the face of external expectations, but the honest truth is that I don’t really care if they get the best grades, win all the sports, or perform like virtuosos. I care about their character— their kindness, honesty, helpfulness, and willingness to show up for the people they care about— and that they have an unshakeable sense of self-worth.

I’ve bet on my belief that their emotional health and intelligence and their ability to live in right relationship with the world around them is the foundation to focus on building. That everything else that matters, particularly to them, will follow. And when I back up and observe my son, who I so despaired over when he was in high school, it seems to have been a good wager.

Two and a half years out from high school graduation he’s got a steady job at which he works hard. He gets himself up in the morning and out the door on time. He advocates for himself at work, and pushes his employers on issues connected to his values. He’s embedded in a community of friends and lovers who take care of each other. He pays me rent and helps out around the house. In the spring, he’s finally enrolling in college (his decision) and is thinking strategically about constructing a major that can support what he wants to do in the world rather than just choosing what’s on offer.

He embodies the answer to my original question: how do we prepare ourselves to dig in when it really matters?

We focus on our integrity and self-worth. We take ownership of our beliefs and motivations. We surround ourselves with people that support and celebrate us. Then, when it’s time to dig in, we aren’t awash in anxiety, ambivalence, or resistance. We choose our hard and get to work.

What hard do you choose?

To my paying folks,

I ordered several books that I want to read as part of our ambition project. The first one I’m in the midst of is this:

Expect a first installment within the next week. There’s tons of food for thought in this one and I’m looking forward to sharing it with you.

XO, Asha