Ok so last weekend Yetta and I took the boys on a 20-mile backpacking trip up a portion of the Appalachian Trail. Backpacking. Not hiking.
There’s a difference. IYKYK.
For those who don’t, hiking is a lighthearted jaunt through the wilderness unencumbered, typically, by anything more than a day pack. Backpacking is shouldering 35–55 pounds of gear (tent, sleeping bags, food, water filters, first aid, stove, headlamps, socks, hope, and the kitchen sink) for days at a time. Suffice it to say, the two activities are different and this week I discovered all too well the great divide between those day hikers and those who’ve actually gone backpacking.
The day hiker’s response: “Oh 20 miles? That’s a nice little hike.” or “Thats good that you started the boys off on a small hike.” or my favorite, “Eh. I could do that.”
The backpacker’s response: “How many days did you do it in?” “Man, that’s a good distance.” “How heavy was your pack?” or “You took a four year old on a 20-mile backpacking trip??”
(Oh yeah, our four-year-old Wes did the trip and walked/hiked/climbed/crawled nearly the entire 20 miles in two days. So did our six-, eight-, and ten-year-olds. More on that in a moment.)
Why so much focus on the difference between the two responses? Because it drew into sharp relief something I’ve been thinking about lately: The struggles others experience seem weightless if you haven’t walked in their shoes or carried a pack of similar weight.
And I’ll be honest, a 20-mile backpacking trip with four little boys felt almost insurmountable at times. (My hyperbolic tendencies encouraged me to write that we almost died. But as the discerning reader will have gathered by this point, this is a mostly-reputable writing endeavor. Only the facts ma’am!)
There were times that Yetta or I were literally carrying boys (ok, fine, mostly Yetta). There were times Yetta and I were carrying multiple kids’ backpacks (ok, fine, mostly Yetta). There were times that we felt we couldn’t go another step further (ok, fine, mostly Wes and me after mile 13 on day 2). There was the time the boys found themselves uncomfortably close to a rattlesnake nest. There was the time that we got completely drenched in a 2-hour long torrential downpour and lightning storm. There was the time that our water filter broke halfway through day 2, and we essentially had to decide whether to camp on the night of day 2 or push through an extra 3.5 miles to finish the trip that night. (We chose the latter option, reasoning that the temporary pain of pushing past exhaustion probably outweighed potential dehydration the next day.)
Let’s just say, backpacking is often filled with difficulty and a manageable amount of risk. I’m sure there’s some tie-in to that famous Robert Frost poem somewhere around here about two roads diverging in the woods and taking the one less travelled. But I digress.
Was this backpacking trip all hard and uncomfortable? No! In fact in a debrief afterwards, I calculated with Yetta that perhaps 80% of the time was enjoying the beauty of nature, falling into the peaceful rhythm of the footfalls (punctuated by the boy’s chatter), and coming across peaceful glades and inspiring vistas of the valley that our portion of the Appalachians overlooked.
But the beauty did not negate the difficulty. And the difficulty did not negate the beauty. They coexisted and brought each other into sharper relief.
And there WAS difficulty. It was hard. So hard that I actually passed out from dehydration about a tenth of a mile from the end of our journey in Harpers Ferry. But, we’re glad we did it. And here’s why: Because we wanted the difficulty. We wanted to be stretched.
A couple years ago, we read the book The Comfort Crisis. (You might remember that I mentioned this a few weeks ago in another newsletter.) In it, Michael Easter explains how modern society, with all its conveniences and systems, has removed discomfort. And the comfort we now take for granted is slowly killing us.
We’ve eliminated most of the physical hardship our ancestors faced. And it turns out that the more comfortable a society gets, the higher that almost every category of social ill skyrockets. Depression. Substance Abuse. Suicide. Violence. Unrest. You name it.
In short: We traded one kind of hard for another.
Paradoxically, the easier life becomes in one category (think physically, natural needs being met, basic health and safety, etc.) the harder life becomes in other categories (mental health, social health, etc.).
And as I’ve thought about this, an idea has emerged. As human beings, we have an opportunity to “choose the hard we want for our lives.” More simply, I’ve come to merely say, “We choose our hard.”
I’d take it a step further and say that every person already does choose which hard they want. They just might not realize it.
I can hear your objections: “Don’t be daft! Many people are handed difficulties and circumstances outside of their control! They didn’t choose their pain!” First of all, does anyone actually use the word “daft” any more? Please, modernize your language. But, now that I’m done strawmanning you (and tossing out ad-hominems), I’d say, this: “Yes. People are OFTEN handed bum hands.”
Think of the homeless. Think of the impoverished. Think of minorities who face discrimination. Think of people with health issues or diseases. I could write a book about the difficult circumstances a given person might be born into. But I could also write a book about the countless people who have also been born into those exact circumstances and who pulled themselves out of it through grit, determination, and hard work.
We recently produced a documentary series on people who did just that with our friends at AEI. People who were sexually abused. People who were born via rape. People who were marginalized and oppressed. They didn’t accept their hardship as a life sentence. They chose a new kind of hard: grit, determination, and hard work. And in doing so, they gained something powerful: agency.
If they had accepted their life situation as unchangeable and limiting, they would have had hard lives. But, they didn’t regard their difficult origins as the launch of an unchangeable trajectory.. They took a stand, pursued improvement, chose hard work and…they still had hard lives.
And that’s the key. All paths are hard. Yet, with the path of “chosen difficulty” we gain something we wouldn’t have had in our alternate life paths – a sense of agency, a sense of being a master of our own destinies (or at least a co-creator/partaker in the thrill of changing our destinies).
My dear friends Alex and Brett Harris (yes, twins) became famous in their teens almost 20 years ago for a book they wrote called Do Hard Things. The premise was simple: Teens don’t want to live in a world of low-expectations. Teens want more. They were built for challenge. The idea caught on like wildfire, spawning a nationwide movement called “the Rebelution” that lasted over a decade. The reason their ideas resonated is because that desire for challenge and agency is built into every human heart.
And here’s where this story comes full circle for all of us who tell stories or try to communicate to supporters, clients, or other human beings (if you don’t fall into any of those categories, this newsletter might not be for you). We all ought to be asking ourselves two simple questions:
1. Are you communicating with others in a way that appeals to their desire for meaning, and…
2. Are you inspiring them to choose the better kind of hard?
Those two questions have come to animate everything the Distant Moon team and I try to undertake over the last few years. And the result? We aren’t merely inspiring our audiences to pursue the “hard path” that leads to human flourishing and avoid the “hard path” that leads to continued frustration and stagnation. We’re also reinforcing and re-learning for ourselves each day that the chosen “hard path” is always preferable to the “hard path” we receive from circumstance. Oh, and remember that ham-fisted reference to Robert Frost earlier?
“That has made all the difference.”
Want to Listen Instead of Read These Newsletters?
Several weeks ago, I was talking with a good friend who suggested, “Ian. A lot of people would like what you write in your newsletter, but don’t want to take the time to read it.” Then someone else chimed in, “oh, yeah, I’d love to listen to this newsletter as a podcast.” And I agreed with their assessment. So, I’ve started recording these newsletters as podcasts. Every newsletter will include the link to a podcast form of the previous newsletter. So without further ado, I present, the inaugural episode of the Human Flourishing Newsletter Podcast. (Gosh, that’s a cumbersome name.)
Spotify Link: LISTEN HERE
Youtube Link: WATCH HERE
Project Spotlight: The White House Story of America
I have shared a few videos for the collaboration we’ve been producing for the White House and Hillsdale College over the last few months. But I haven’t shared the context. We’re working with both parties to produce a series of dozens of short videos on America’s most important events and dates related to the Revolutionary War. The series will culminate next July for the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. But we’ll be producing many videos between now and then.
We just released a video about the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill. And later this week, we release a video about the Declaration’s meaning and purpose (this 4th of July is the 249th anniversary of its signing). Stay tuned for more updates over the coming months!
ALSO, if you’re one of my many friends who might wonder “How can Ian work on something with THAT administration?!” Check out my Linkedin post about this very topic. We live in contentious times, but if we can all add a bit more truth, beauty, and goodness into the world, I’m all for trying to help make that happen!